UNCUT April 2015 UK

“i am a ton pa inter/I live in a box of paints/ I r m frightened by the devil/A rad / r m draw n f o those ones th at atn *t a fra id rt

JULIAN COPE

/ITIpagesof

^HJreviews

LAURA MARLING
BJORK

MATTHEW E WHITE

COURTNEY BARNETT

AND MORE...

of a Bad Seed

Nashville’s

The emotional
' ’ return of

Chosen by

Robert Plant
Pink Floyd
David Crosby
Radiohead and more

PLUS

caugnim a iuture
shock time-warp”

MITCHEL

APRIL 2015 | CNCUT.CO UK

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original

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4 Instant Karma!

In the studio with PJ Harvey, plus The
Yardbirds, Curtis Harding, Jellyfish

14 Phil Manzanera

An audience with the Roxy guitarist

18 Sufjan Stevens

One of America s most restless musical
spirits explains how road trips, rodeos
and grief led him to return to folk music

24 Nick Cave

Warren Ellisgivesustheinsidestory
of the Bad Seeds - from silences and
boils to respect for Austra lia n goths...

30 Joni Mitchell

Her 30 greatest songs, as chosen by
Robert Plant, Pink Floyd, Radiohead,
Graham Nash, REM and more

42 The Dave Clark Five

The making of “Glad All Over”

46 New Country

Uncut meets a young breed of country
artists, positioned between the grit of
Americana and mainstream glitz

54 The The

Album by album with Matt Johnson

58KimFowley

We salute the late rock legend, and rescue
a hair-raising 1972 Fowley interviewfrom
the Melody Maker archives

40 PAGES OF REVIEWS!

65 New Albums

Including: Laura Marling, Ryley
Walker, Bjork, Courtney Barnett

87 The Archive

Including: The Specials,

Bob Marley, Roxy Music

99 DVD & Film

Altman , Winter bottoms The Face
OfAnAngel , Joe Strummer doc

104 Live

Julian Cope, Lambchop

117 Books

Kim Gordon, Sandy Denny

118 Not Fade Away

This month s obituaries

120 Feedback

Your letters, plus the Uncut crossword

122 My Life In Music

Jim Kerr

Are we rolling?

Joni mucheu. Hejira "^^OW DO YOU choose the greatest Joni

Mitchell song - or even, abandoning the
wild goose chase of objectivity, your
.personal favourite Joni Mitchell song?

It’s a daunting challenge, and one that not all of the
illustrious contributors to this month’s cover story
would accept. When we asked David Crosby to pick a
song, he gave us another one of his delightful pro-Joni
and anti-Dylan rants, and scrupulously avoided
specifics. “There’s so many songs of hers that are
so brilliantly written,” he countered. “You can’t say
which one is the best. There are 30 or 40 best ones.”

In the end, and with the help of Roger McGuinn, Matthew E White,
Graham Nash, Linda Perhacs, Mike Heron and quite a few more, we settled
on 30 songs. To rank them in any kind of order, though, struck us as an
excruciating and ultimately pointless procedure; to be honest, we bottled
it. On page 30, then, you’ll find 30 insightful pieces on 30 exceptional Joni
songs, arranged in the order they were released, beginning with
Radiohead’s Philip Selway on “Both Sides, Now” and ending with the
2002 orchestral version of “Amelia”, nominated by Robert Plant.

I ended up contributing a few over-wrought words about “Song For
Sharon” to the piece, and in this issue I also wrote about PJ Harvey’s
tantalising “Recording In Process” project, and Sam Lee’s new album,

The Fade In Time, another one of those records I seem to be fixated on at
the moment that makes deep, scholarly and emotional connections with
old traditions, without being hamstrung by them.

Serendipitous, too, that one of my favourite new albums that’s turned up
in the last few days is by The Weather Station, ostensibly a Canadian singer-
songwriter called Tamara Lindeman. Like great swathes of the new Laura
Marling album reviewed on page 74, The Weather Station’s Loyalty doesn’t
really sound much like a record that could’ve been made in LA 40 years ago,
but it does have a certain grace and profundity, a husky nuance or two that
hits a few familiar emotional triggers... “7 see something of myself in
everyone” as “Hejira” goes, “Just at this moment of the world”

Speaksoon,

John Mulvey, Editor

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

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COVER: JACK ROBINSON/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

RECORDING IN PROGRESS, PJ HARVEY, 2015. A COMMISSION BY ARTANGEL AND SOMERSET HOUSE. PHOTOGRAPH BY SEAMUS MURPHY.

liNiSTANT KARiMiAi!

THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF UNCUT
Featuring THE YARDBIRDS | ALEJANDRO JODOROWSICY | JELLYFISH

MEETZE

MONSTA!

In the studio with PJ HARVEY and friends.
Involves lemon sherbets, faulty saxophones and,
eventually, a geopolitical' new album...

B Y THE ENTRANCE to
Somerset House on
Waterloo Bridge, there is
a shop called Knyttan,
where one can “create your
own unique jumper and see it made
in front of you .” It is near here, on a
bright January day, that about 40
people wait to be summoned down to
the basement. PJ Harvey’s “Recording
In Progress” project started four days
earlier, a kind of installation where
Harvey and her band work on their
next album in a glass box, unable to
see or hear the fans who watch, with
self-consciously suppressed
excitement, on the other side.

To enforce the aesthetics of an art
event, the programme contains an
interview with Harvey by Michael
Morris, co-director of the organisers,
Artangel. They talk a good deal about
the significance of place, and the
history of Somerset House: about how
Oliver Cromwell’s body lay in state
there; about how its stone comes from
the Jurassic Coast, near Harvey’s
birthplace; about how the Thames
runs under the building. The putative
album, Morris reveals, will be a
“broader, more geopolitical record
than Let England Shake".

“This cycle of songs considers the
major issues of our time,” he notes,
“social inequality and injustice, the
politics of poverty, anxiety and
paranoia about terrorism and the
way that hate breeds hate among
generations in opposition.” Money,
it will transpire, gets everywhere.

It will also buy you a photograph by
Harvey collaborator Seamus Murphy
(£300), or a sheet of Harvey’s lyrics-in-

progress (£50), on sale in a grand
anteroom, smelling of paint. Handing
in all electronic devices is a necessary
protocol: PJ Harvey’s openness,
reasonably enough, has its limits.

At 1pm, Artangel curators lead
us down into the lower levels of
Somerset House, towards a room that
was, in a previous life, the Inland
Revenue’s staff gymnasium. Two
sides of the studio are glass, enclosing
Harvey, producer Flood, John Parish,
Terry Edwards, drummer Kendrick
Rowe and two techs/engineers, plus
photographer Murphy. There is a

As the public can
only see 45-minute
fragments, a bigger
picture remains
tantalisingly
obscured...

heraldic crest for PJ Harvey on the
wall and on a marching band bass
drum, the shield supported by a goat
and a two-headed dog.

Edwards is playing flute, heavily
distorted. Parish is hunched over a
National Steel guitar. Rowe is stood
up, playing rolls on two snares. Flood
is sat on a white sofa in his parka.
Harvey is surrounded by saxophones,
autoharps and a small mixer, blowing
her nose. After a few minutes, they
begin again, Harvey singing what
seems to be “God sent you" over a

dense accompaniment. Is This Desire
might be the closest comparison,
though it may also be a mistake to
draw comparisons at this early stage.

It is, though, a short and instantly
excellent song, one whose catchiness
will become apparent over the next 45
minutes. Harvey’s part ends with
some virtuoso whoops and, as it
finishes, the audience almost start to
clap, then realise that such a response
would be vulgar - and, of course,
futile, since the performers cannot
hear anything outside their space.

Flood, who soon emerges as the
dominant - or at least the most
voluble - character, gives his notes on
the take; he is not happy with Parish’s
guitar part. Harvey is stationed well
away from the glass, ensuring no-one
can read her lyrics and notes, and
surrounded by those arcane
instruments, aesthetically pleasing
objects that illuminate a blank and
functional room. While she allows
Flood to do most of the speaking,
Harvey’s constant alertness, the way
she turns precisely to look at whoever
is talking, is striking. What seems to
be passivity reveals itself to be a more
considered, collaborative, discreetly
authoritative way of working.

One of the engineers appears to be
giving names to each take, and this is
“Brian Take”. It’s a significantly
demystifying moment, when the
reality of the project becomes clearer.
The spectacle isn’t really much like an
art installation, and the odd scenario
doesn’t add any mystique to studio
in-jokes, it just broadcasts them to 40
fans quietly delighted at the intimacy
of their access. ©

4 I UNCUT | APRIL 2015

PJ Harvey, with the
Jurassic Coast
stone of Somerset
House, London

RECORDING IN PROGRESS, PJ HARVEY, 2015. A COMMISSION BY ARTANGEL AND SOMERSET HOUSE. PHOTOGRAPH BY SEAMUS MURPHY; GREG ALLEN

INSTANT KARMA!

© For all the artificiality, nothing is that different
from a routine studio session; plenty of artists have
recorded in busy studios, full of friends, associates
and hangers-on. Myths around Harvey often
privilege the seriousness, intensity and privacy
of what people assume is her working practice, but
maybe that’s a naive way of looking at a collective
and often mundane endeavour. One of the critical
uses of “Recording In Progress” is that it
eliminates some of those assumptions, while also
ensuring Harvey stays in control. It’s a new way for
her to challenge her own shyness, in a mediated
way, and deploy it as part of the artistic process.

Another take begins, and with Parish’s noise
reduced, Edwards’ flute rises to the fore; looping
and scuffy, reminiscent of how Florian Schneider
played on early Kraftwerk tracks like “Ruckzuck”.
Flood approves. Edwards says something about
“distorted ska”. Behind them, on a wallchart,

what appear to be song titles are listed, explicit in
their engagement with money, politics, the city:
“River Anacostia”, “Medicinals”, “Chain Of Keys”,
“Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln”,

“A Dog Called Money”, “The Ministry Of Social
Affairs”, “The Age Of The Dollar”, “The
Community Of Hope”, “The Wheel”, “Homo
Sappy Blues”, “The Ministry Of Defence”, “The
Boy”, “A Line In The Sand”, “Dollar Dollar”, “I’ll
Be Waiting”, “The Orange Monkey”, “Guilty”. But
as the public can only see the work in progress in
45-minute fragments, a bigger picture remains
tantalisingly obscured. On January 23, atipm,
work is being done on the chorus and horns of
“Guilty”; a jar of lemon sherbets near the mixing
desk has depleted significantly in the intervening
three days. On February 5, at 1pm, baritone sax
issues prompt a telephone call to a music shop.

At 1.30 on January 20, though, Edwards
nonchalantly picks up a melodica and honks
along, disconsolately. Flood is impressed, and
gives him a thumbs-up. Harvey, meanwhile,
makes a note on a sheet from her music stand. “It’s
starting to sound pretty interesting now,” she says,
approvingly. “How’s the song going?” asks Flood.
“I don’t know where the song is,” she laughs.

She has, though, an idea, and begins blowing on
a tenor sax, eventually matching her tone to that of
Edwards’ melodica. They are about to start the
song again when the sound cuts out in the viewing
space, and the curators shepherd us away.

“You’ll witness something that is passing in real
time,” Harvey says in the programme, “and I feel
the best part of any creation is the creating itself.
That is when it’s most vital, most exciting...” And
perhaps, after such a brief glimpse of that process,
when it can also be most frustrating.

JOHNMULVEY

mimmmmm

“We warned to come
from outer space, not from
the plumbing truck!”

Reintroducing Californian powerpop savants
JELLYFISH. Twenty years on, what went wrong?
Introspective country ballads - or The Sweet?

Tentacle-CC:(l-r) Chris
Manning (back), Andy
Sturmer, Jason Falkner,
Roger Manning Jr

E WERE SO interested in putting
on an entertaining, theatrical
show. A lot of artists then were

wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with an acoustic
guitar strapped to their back. But we found no
reason why we couldn’t present ourselves as a
direct extension of the music: colourful, many-
faceted. We had serious and heartfelt songs, and
others that made you smile and laugh.”

Songwriter and keyboardist Roger Manning Jr
is recalling his time in Jellyfish, the San
Francisco quartet that brought a welcome splash
of Technicolor to early ’90s pop. Theirs was a
universe of fizzing hooks, urgent choruses and
gang harmonies, played by men in flamboyantly
retro stage gear to a backdrop of Christmas lights,
bubble machines and white picket fences. “It was
kind of a resistance to the everyman thing that
was about to explode with grunge,” explains
guitarist Jason Falkner. “We wanted to come
from outer space, not from the plumbing truck.”

The two albums that Jellyfish released in their
short lifespan, 1990’s Bellybutton and Spilt Milk
(1993), sparkling monuments to ageless power-
pop, have just been reissued. Both carry echoes
of the bands that inspired them, yet at the same
time filtered through the post-punk sensibility of
Manning and co-writer (and chief vocalist) Andy
Sturmer. Says Manning: “I remember Andy and
I listening to The Zombies’ OdesseyAnd Oracle,
McCartney’s Ram and iocc’s Sheet Music and
saying: ‘If we can combine the aesthetic of these
three records, we’ve got something.’ Those were
huge influences, along with XTC, Queen, Cheap
Trick and everything else.”

Fired by singles “The King
Is Half-Undressed” and
“Baby’s Coming Back”,

Bellybutton
brought
themcultish

acclaim in

the US and overseas, though all wasn’t quite rosy.
“There was tension when we made that,” offers
Falkner, “so some stuff you’re hearing is literally
anger. In the solo on ‘She Still Loves Him’, I was
screaming through my guitar.” Frustrated at his
lack of songwriting opportunities, Falkner quit
after the accompanying tour.

Spilt Milk took two years to complete, Manning
and Sturmer intent on creating a multi-layered
suite of sophisticated pop. “It was challenging,”
Manning admits. “But, forme, the Jellyfish vision
was fully realised on Spilt Milk. It moves all over
the place, but that’s what our heroes all did.”

Post-SpiltMilk, Sturmer began to write
introspective country ballads; Manning wanted
to sound like The Sweet. By 1994 it was all over.
Sturmer tried his hand at production, Falkner
formed The Grays and Manning co-founded
Imperial Drag.

“Jellyfish was everything we hoped it would
be,” says Manning, who, along with Falkner, has
most recently been in Beck’s backing band. “We
contributed to a legacy of pop classicism. And
that’s really all that we were ever trying to do.”

ROBHUGHES

Jellyfish's two albums are out now on Omnivore

6 I UNCUT | APRIL 2015

TRAIN STOPPED
A-ROLLING?

The Yardbirds played at the 100 Club as part of Independent
Venue Week, www.independentvenueweek.com

After 52 years, THE YARDBIRDS
at least appear to call it a day.
“There’s no plans/’ says
Jim McCarty...

66 T OTS OF PEOPLE have come
on board,” says original
J ^ Yardbirds drummer Jim
McCarty of the band’s present-day
fanbase. “Young people who have
found our music through Zeppelin.

The repertoire is so strong, it’s
become more and more popular,
strangely. It’s like a fine wine.”

For the time being, however, that
fine Yardbirds wine is being laid down
in the cellar again. After several enjoyable
years playing with a lineup featuring original
members McCarty alongside (rhythm guitar/bassist)

Chris Dreja and latterly original guitarist Top Topham, in late
January, the band played their last London show with their
current formation. “All the young guys are going out,” says
McCarty. “There’s no plans.”

Rather than a tearful farewell, the band’s 100 Club show on
January 30 proves to be a packed-out, sweaty old rave-up.
Watched by beat fans aged from 40 to 70-odd, the band tear
through a Yardbirds chronology that mirrors their evolution
from blues purists, to psychedelic adventurers, to the proto-Led
Zeppelin that they had, by their break-up in 1968, become.

“We were always a blues band,” says Top Topham, introducing
“Heart Full Of Soul”. “But along the way hits did come along...”

A band known as much for the remarkable shadow cast by
their post-Topham lead guitarists Eric Clapton (1963-65), Jeff
Beck (1965-66) and Jimmy Page (1966-68) as much as for their
group compositions, the set demonstrates the breadth of what
the band achieved beyond the showmanship of their alumni.
None of these august figures show up for a “surprise guest”
turn, but lead guitarist Ben King stays well abreast of the band’s
definitive “Train Kept A-Rolling”, the Stonesy breakdown of
“Over Under Sideways Down”, and melancholic psych gems
like “Still I’m Sad” and “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”.

As dynamic as the band’s “Dazed And Confused” sounds,

it is probably in emulating the straining string
bends and feedback of the Jeff Beck era that the
band particularly excel. This might not entirely be
:oincidence.

most idyllic time was probably round ’66 with
the Jeff Beck lineup,” McCarty recalls. “It was getting into a
different sound: starting from the blues and then really opening
out into something rather original. Jeff really did go for it.”

There were downsides to this. “Of course, he went for it in terms
of sound,” McCarty recalls. “But when you played a gig you could
never really be sure what was going to happen. That was always
very tricky, without a doubt.”

While the band has no plans for a new live lineup, they’re not
idle. The surviving original members are working on definitive
remastered re-releases of their at present rather spotty catalogue.

“Our catalogue has been a long story,” says McCarty. “We lost
the rights to most of it. At the moment, Charly [Records] are
considering putting the catalogue together with us on board,
which would be good - we’re in the middle of that now.”

What McCarty hopes for is an agreement to get “all the best bits
to the public” in a form the band can be proud of. For him, that
would mean a reissue of 1966’s The Yardbirds (known as ‘Roger
The Engineer’), which “has all the best qualities of the band
represented”. In the meantime, like that of The Pretty Things, the
freakbeat legend of The Yardbirds only continues to grow.

McCarty chuckles. “It’s almost like a cult, isn’t it?”

JOHN ROBINSON

UNCUTS END OF THE ROAD

The War On Drugs and
Sufjan confirmed for our
favourite festival

NCE AGAIN THISyear, Uncutis
enormously proud to be involved with
the End Of The Road festival - not
least because, more than ever, its lineup so
accurately reflects the music we’re excited
about in 2015 * Between September 4 and 6,
then, Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset will play
host to three auspicious headliners: our 2014

Album Of The Year winners The WarOn
Drugs, Tame Impala and Sufjan Stevens, who
we’ve exclusively interviewed on page 18 of
this issue. Joining them will be a supporting
cast that includes Future Islands, The
Unthanks, Sleaford Mods, Jessica Pratt,
Natalie Prass and plenty more key acts still to
be announced. Tickets on sale now cost £195,
and you can find out more by visiting www.
endoftheroadfestival.com. See you there!

END OF THE ROAD

A QUICK ONE

Advance
warning that our
next Ultimate
Music Guide rolls
outon March 12 ,
this time dedicated
tothegeniusof
Kate Bush. Lots
of full-length,
historically
fascinating
interviews from
NMEand Melody
Maker in there,

plus deep new
essays on every
Bushalbum.

We just know
that something
good is going to
happen, etc...

>* In a moving
open letterto his
fans, Gong’s
Daevid Allen has
announced that his
“cancer is now so
well established I
have been given
approximately six
months to live... I
believe that the
time has come to
stop resisting and
denying and to
surrendertothe
way it is.” Allen
revealed he will
have no further
surgery. “I can
only hope,” he
continued, “that
during thisjourney,
I have somehow
contributed to the
happinessinthe
lives of a few other
fellow humans.”

>* Excellent news
for Londoners: The
Replacements
haveannounced
their first U K shows
in 24 years, playing
the Roundhouse
on June2and3-
Westerberg and
co will also call in
at Barcelona’s
Primavera Sound
(May 28) and
Amsterdam
Paradiso(May
30) after a month
of US dates.

>* Visit www.
uncut.co.uk for
daily news, reviews,
playlistsand the
best longreads
from the archive.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 7

ROGER T SMITH/REX; ANNABEL STAFF/REDFERNS

COURTESY OF ABICCO

‘When l ate the
mushrooms,

I became a lion!’

A trip into the alternate world of cinef reak
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY: how
George Harrison’s bum lost him millions...

I T IS NEARLY midnight when
Uncut speaks to Alejandro
Jodorowsky on the phone from
his home in Paris. But the Chilean
filmmaker is untroubled by the
lateness of the hour. “I have no
feeling of time,” he explains. “I have
been living in Paris almost 100 lives.

To me, there are a lot of Alejandro
Jodorowskys who died. Then I am
reborn. Everything is changing.
You, me, the universe. Everything.”

A conversation with Jodorowsky
takes a lot of fascinating, if
unexpected, diversions. Ostensibly,
we are here to discuss the reissue of

three soundtracks to his films: El
Topo, The Holy Mountain and The
Dance Of Reality. The first of those,
the psychedelic magic-realist
western El Topo (1970), won the
director powerful fans, including
John Lennon, who helped secure
funds for 1973’s The Holy Mountain.
“He recommended Allen Klein buy
El Topo , and he did,” recalls the
director. “I met George Harrison in
the Plaza Hotel in New York, in a big
suite. He was dressed all in white.
Very, very spiritual. I wanted him to
star in The Holy Mountain. He said,

‘I like the script, I want to do the
picture. But there is one little part I
cannot do.’ I said, ‘What little part?’
He said, ‘In a swimming pool, with
a hippopotamus, I must clean my
asshole in front of the camera. I
don’t want to do that.’ I said to him,
‘I am very happy that you like my
picture. But this moment is very
important for the picture and you
are the biggest star and if you show
your anus it will be the most
fantastic illustration of how humble
your ego is.’ Then he said, ‘No, I

can’t do it.’ I lost millions of dollars!”

Nevertheless, Jodorowsky filmed
The Holy Mountain in Mexico in 1972
while undergoing spiritual training
developed by “Bolivian master”
Oscar Ichazo. “He came to Mexico
City. I paid $17,000 to learn how to
be a guru. He fed me LSD. There was
also Maria Sabina, the priestess of
the sacred mushrooms. She had a
vision I’d make a picture that would
help the world realise the true value
of our culture. She sent me
mushrooms in a jar of honey. When I
ate them, I became a lion. I went up
to the roof and made a connection
with every one of the stars.”

A wild mix of jazz, rock, avant-
garde and Eastern influences, the
soundtrack to The Holy Mountain
was composed in collaboration
with jazz trumpeter Don Cherry: a
kindred spirit. “His aim was to have
in his life only things he found in
the street. He had a broken trumpet
he played at right angles.”

Following The Holy Mountain,
Jodorowsky and Klein fell out. “He
wanted me to make a picture [The
Story 0/‘0’]. I didn’t want to do it.

I escaped... we fought for 30 years.”

After an ill-fated attempt to film
Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune,
Jodorowsky’s career dwindled. “I
didn’t make pictures for 22 years,”
he sighs. “I tried, but it is very
difficult to make a picture that isn’t
Hollywood shit.” He returned to
active filmmaking in 2013 with the
autobiographical The Dance Of
Reality: a sequel is currently
planned. Meanwhile, he has
enjoyed a successful career writing
comic books; he also gives weekly
psychomagic lectures. “Everyone
of us is sleeping,” he confides.
“Because we have an ego, and we
are not really what we are. We need
to be awakened.” At 86, it seems
Alejandro Jodorowsky has no
intention of slowing down. “To
be old doesn’t exist,” he claims.
“Inside, I am the same. In order not
to get old, I just don’t look at myself
in the mirror.” MICHAEL BONNER

The Jodorowsky soundtracks are
released by Finders Keepers in the
UKandABKCO in America

THE CLASSIFIEDS

90 Wardour St., W.1

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THIS MONTH: The Cure's gig at the Marquee is advertised, with support
from a certain Joy Division... Taken from NME's March 3,1979 issue

LINE

LOVICH

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SUNDAY IBth MARCH at 7 30

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■ hu-riday Iv-tMarch

THE FALL + Staff 9

tnday Zrul March

SOFT BOYS + The Stickers

Saturday

BLACK SLATE + Neon

Sunday 4ih Maid.

RACING CARS + Support

Monday ith Mar*

PINPOINT + THE VALVES

TtMksday Sill March

SKID ROW + Oasis

TT‘u*v:1a v Bih Mwcti

PRETENDERS + Neon

noel gallagher’s
high flying birds

chasing yesterday

bjork

vulnicura

public service broadcasting

the race for space

jon hopkins

late night tales

'T

the monochrome set

spaces everywhere

suck it and see

fopp stores

▼

gang of four

what happens next

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- if they suck we’ll give you a swap or your lolly

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HEDISLIMANE

THE UNCUT PLAYLIST

INSTANTI KARMA!

ON THE STEREO THIS MONTH...

ALABAMA SHAKES
Sound & Color rough trade
A brilliant expansion of the rock’n’soul
band’s MO, as cosmic R&B jams rub up
alongside garage ramalam and much more.

Curtis Harding

Recommended this month: How a child gospel star fell
in with Cee Lo Green and the Black Lips and ended up
2015’s feistiest new soulman

A T 35 YEARS OLD, Atlanta’s Curtis Harding
might be considered a little long in the
tooth to be releasing his debut album. But
Soul Power is a record of experience. Equal parts
horn-powered soul and garage grit, when it rocks
- as on the hell-for-leather “Surf” - it rocks hard.
And when it hurts - see the bereft “I Need A
Friend” - you really feel the ache. “I wanted live
instrumentation, all analog,” says Harding.

“I wanted it to touch on styles that I love - soul,
classic rock, punk. But I didn’t want it to sound
like a throwback. It had to sound timeless.”

Curtis Harding had the sort of childhood that
makes a boy grow up fast. His mother was a
travelling evangelist, and Harding and his three
sisters were her gospel band. “We’d be out 1am on
a school night, singing to homeless people. Next
day we’d be singing for gang members. We’d do
this from LA to New York, Tijuana to the
Bahamas.” At the time, playing in
Mom’s band felt embarrassing.

“But I think she knew things about
me that I didn’t know about myself.

It made me resourceful, adaptable.

I went places most kids would
feel uncomfortable.”

Aged 16, Harding was hanging
around Atlanta’s pool halls, started
a rap group, and worked his way
into the inner circle of Cee Lo Green,
the soul singer later to find fame
in Gnarls Barkley. Harding sung
backup for Cee Lo for five years,
but the lifestyle took its toll: “I was
getting caught up in the parties,
the drugs... I felt myself slipping.”

So he took off for Canada for a year,
waiting tables. There, he wrote
“Castaway”, a song about severing
ties and surrendering to fate.

“I didn’t know where I was going to end up.”

It was Cole Alexander, frontman of Atlanta
hellraisers the Black Lips that relit his fire. Harding
heard Alexander DJ-ing old gospel records - the
same his mother loved - at a bar. They got to
chatting, and soon formed garage-soul group
Night Sun, whose recordings sound like a dry run
for Soul Power . But it was, says Harding, as much a
mentality thing. “The Black Lips are regular guys,
common folk. If they could do it and maintain
their sincerity and sanity, I knew I could.”

Released on California’s Burger Records last
summer, Soul Power won Harding some
influential admirers. Jack White took him out on
tour, while a set at California’s Beach Style festival
led to a meeting with Hedi Slimane, creative
director of Saint Laurent. “He said, T want to take
pictures of you with your guitar.’ I said, T don’t
take pictures with my guitar.’ And he said, ‘That’s
the same thing Chuck Berry said.’”

The pair collaborated on a video
for Harding’s “Next Time”, while
one of Slimane’s photos graces Soul
Power’s cover. Meanwhile, Soul
Power has just been released in the
UK and Europe on Anti-, home of
Tom Waits, among others. But
Harding is taking it in his stride.

“The goal was to make an album
that I want to hear. Don’t get me
wrong, I love it when people dig
what I’m doing,” he laughs. “But
I’m headstrong in that way.”

LOUIS PATTISON

Curtis Harding’s Soul Power is
out now. He plays London Bethnal
Green Working Men’s Club on
March 11 and Leeds Brudenell
Social Club on March 12

1 YOUR FAN

“Curtis
Harding is
this very cool,
very current
soul artist.

He really has
a good vibe”

Iggy Pop

BOP ENGLISH

Constant Bop blood an d biscuits
James Petralli takes a solo detour, without
losing any of the invention and vigour that
have made his regular band, White Denim,
such an enduring Uncut favourite.

THE WEATHERSTATION
Loyalty paradise of bachelors
Rather neatly, one of the month’s best new
arrivals carries strong echoes of Joni
Mitchell. From Canada, too, should you
need further serendipity.

DEAN McPHEE
Fatima’s Hand hood faire
Uncanny twang from West Yorkshire, as
the fine solo guitarist spirals elegantly into
Frippertronic territory.

APHEXTWIN
Early Demos soundcloud
An unprecedented
binge opportunity
for electronica fans,
as Aphex-or
“user4873635300l”

- dumps dozens of
unreleased gems
onto the net. Might
not be him, of course,
but still excellent.

THEJONSPENCER

BLUES EXPLOSION

Freedom Tower bronzerat

The subtitle reads “No Wave Dance Party

2015 ”* A new year, though, makes no

difference to the bracing familiarity of

Spencer’s schtick. “B/ues Explosion!” etc...

GORAN KAJFESSUBTROPIC
ARKESTRA The Reason Why Vol 2 headspin
Swedish trumpeter’s second globetrotting
set of big-band freakouts, with a revelatory
take on Grizzly Bear’s “Yet Again”.

BASSEKOU KOUYATE & NGONI BA

Ba Power GLITTERBEAT
A rock-tinged workout from the Malian
ngoni master, with help from Jon Hassell
and Robert Plant’s drummer Dave Smith.

CALEXICO

Edge Of The Sun cityslang
The eighth formal album from Messrs Burns
and Convertino, explicitly referencing the
career peak of 2003 s Feast Of Wire.

FOLLAKZOID

III SACRED BONES

High-altitude psych from the Chilean
equivalents of Goat. Also features
Kraftwerk’s old Korg!

For regular updates , check our blogs at www.
uncut.co.uk and follow @JohnRMulvey on Twitter

10 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

produce

mark knopfler

tracker

will butler

policy

steve gunn and the
black twig pickers

seasonal hire

spectres

dying

the cribs

for all my sisters

steven Wilson

hand.cannot.erase

purity ring

another eternity

black star riders

the killer instinct

cold war kids

hold my home

i
i

I c~o
w

KIDS

im_—

suck it and see

buy your cds, dvds and books from fopp
- if they suck we’ll give you a swap or your lolly

This offer applies to all cds, dvds and books instore and is only available on production of a valid receipt dated no more than four
weeks from the time of your original purchase. Goods must be in the condition as sold, both the sleeve/case, disc or spine/pages.
We reserve the right to refuse this offer. This offer in no way affects your statutory rights. Titles subject to availability, while stocks
last. Individual titles which appear elsewhere in the store, outside of this campaign, may be priced differently.

fopp stores

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edinburgh rose st // glasgow union St & byres Id //
london covent garden // manchester brown st //
nottingham broadmarsh shopping centre

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BACK TO THE GARDEN

Your guide to this month’s free CD

Back

ToTke

Garden

lSUFJAN STEVENS

No Shade In The Shadow
Of The Cross

An understated start this month, as
Stevens dials back the maximalist
excess of his recent work. The
result, as this track illustrates so
beautifully, is the sort of tender
pop-folk that initially drew Stevens
so many comparisons with Elliott
Smith. Our exclusive interview with
the great man starts on pi8.

2 MATTHEW E WHITE

Rock’n’Roll Is Cold

Hot on the heels of the wonderful
Natalie Prass album, the
Spacebomb gang are back, this
time with the team leader on the
mic. A droll and very catchy
exploration of genre politics,
“Rock’n’Roll Is Cold” sounds a bit

5STEVE GUNN
& THE BLACK TWIG
PICKERS

Trailways Ramble

A few short months after
his Way Out Weather solo
high, the unstoppable
Gunn returns, with the
Virginian Black Twig Pickers
in tow. Droning fiddles and
mouth harps add a raga-ish
intensity, and banjos sub for
sitars. Gunn, meanwhile, sounds
transported, serene in the midst of
this barn-raising, old-time freakout
from new album Seasonal Hire.

6 HOUNDSTOOTH

Borderlands

Mostly untroubled by hype thus
far in their career, Portland’s

Sufjan Stevens
Matthew E White
Courtney Barnett
Marc Almond
Ryley Walker
Steve Gunn
v Cat’s Eyes
\ 23Skidoo
Sam Lee
& more

associate of The National, Antony
Hegarty, Sharon Van Etten, Rufus
Wainwright, Sam Amidon et al.

9 MOON DUO

Slow Down Low

A choogling, dronerock take on
the old “Roadrunner” formula,
enticingly, courtesy of Ripley
Johnson, Sanae Yamada and,
new for this third album, a third
member of the Moon Duo,
drummer John Jeffrey. Johnson
launches one of his trademark

ecstatically technical noise-rock
duo from Providence, if you haven’t
encountered these notable forces of
nature before, with a skree from
their first album in three years.

13 SAM LEE Blackbird

Sam Lee’s second album has been
on heavy office rotation this year,
with its radical, inventive - and in
this case, rather jazzy - new takes
on ancient British folk songs. Like
many of Lee’s finds, “Blackbird”
is Romany in origin, learned from
one May Bradley of Shropshire.

like late VU, produced by Allen
Toussaint and with JJ Cale subbing
for Lou Reed - can’t be bad!

3 RYLEY WALKER

Primrose Green

From our Album Of The Month,
“Primrose Green” is a ravishing
example of the old magic that Ryley
Walker is conjuring up right now. A
wilder talent than most of his folk-
guitar contemporaries, Walker is
shooting for the sort of jazzy highs
that were once associated with Tim

4 COURTNEY BARNETT

Pedestrian At Best

How best to follow up a rapturously
acclaimed debut? By being as
knowing and snarky as possible,
if you’re Australia’s Courtney
Barnett, who also has the good
sense to keep up the high standard
of her grunge-pop. Key - critically
untrue - line: “ Put me on a pedestal
and I’ll only disappoint you!”

Houndstooth are discreet ones to
watch in 2015. This beguiling track
comes from their second album,

No News From Home , and is
reminiscent of another bunch of
unassuming classicists, Yo La
Tengo; just check Katie Bernstein’s
unfussily intimate vocal, so
redolent of Georgia Hubley.

723 SKIDOO Calypso

The quasi-industrial reputation
of 23 Skidoo always did them a
disservice. “Calypso”, from their
first album in 15 years, shows how
Alex Turnbull’s group remain one
of the most durable and underrated
British post-punk bands, here
looping a steel drum sample over
expansive, Eno-ish terrain.

8 HANNAH COHEN

Just Take The Rest

Enchantingly dissolute warbles
galore, from a New York singer who
often recalls a coherent Liz Fraser
or, perhaps more pertinently,
long-lost Sunday, Harriet Wheeler.
Produced by the well-connected
Thomas ‘Doveman’ Bartlett,

guitar solos, all woozy wandering,
at 2:53. Very groovy handclaps, too.

10 WILL BUTLER

Sing To Me

As the Arcade Fire’s latest stadium¬
packing duties draw to a close, Will
Butler has found time to record - at
Electric Lady, no less - a debut solo
album. Policy is a ramshackle and
mostly exuberant return to Butler’s
indie roots. “Sing To Me”, though, is
something different again - a stark
and insidious prayer of sorts, over
sombre piano chords and the
subtlest of string arrangements.

10 MARC ALMOND

Minotaur

When Uncut interviewed Almond
last year about The Tyburn Tree , a
song cycle about ‘Dark London’, he
promised his next album would be
“very posh, lustrous pop”. Here’s
the proof: a luxurious synth ballad
- produced and co-written by Lana
Del Rey collaborator Chris Braide -
that features Almond at his most
elegantly dramatic.

12 LIGHTNING BOLT

The Metal East

Change of pace, anyone? Not the
easiest track to sequence, perhaps,
but it’s great to have the bracing
Lightning Bolt, scourge of a
thousand All Tomorrow’s Parties,
in the month’s mix. A heads-down,

Badwan’s score to the new Peter
Strickland movie, summoning
up strong memories of Michael
Nyman’s “Memorial”. Very grand;
maybe we should do this sort of
thing more often?

14 JOHNNY DOWD

Cadillac Hearse

Dowd might have won Americana
Album Of The Month garlands in
this issue, but the old trickster
remains endearingly tough to
categorise. “Cadillac Hearse”
involves gothic storytelling,
Suicide-like drum machines and
a big dirty guitar riff, not unlike
that of the “Peter Gunn” theme.

15 CATS EYES

Requiem For The Duke
OfBurgundy

To end this month, a flourish.
“Requiem” is the highlight of
Rachel Zeffira and Faris ‘Horrors’

Buckley. Ambitious, perhaps, but
on this form not unreasonable.

12 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

b e I I a

union

available now at bellaunion.com

ZUN ZUN EGUI

Shackles’ Gift

‘exhilirating’ Q

FATHER JOHN MISTY

I Love You, Honeybear
‘truly compelling’ uncut

THE CZARS

Best Of

‘exquisite’ the times

JOHN GRANT

BC CAMPLIGHT

with the BBC Philharmonic How To Die In The North

★★★★ uncut

‘a layered beauty’ Q

EMMY THE GREAT

S

8/10 NME

CLARENCE CLARITY INVENTIONS

HANNAH COHEN

NO NOW

Maze Of Woods

Pleasure Boy

02 . 03.2015

16 . 03.2015

30 . 03.2015

BRIAN COOKE

AN AUDIENCE WITH

The great guitarist and producer on playing with David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Nico
and, of course, Roxy Music: “If we fancied having another go, there’s no rules..

T’S TURNING into an eventful day for Phil
Manzanera. When Uncut arrives at his London
home/studio complex, he’s waiting for a visit from
the RAC to fix his car. Meanwhile, a late morning
meeting has just been postponed, which at least
affords a quiet moment for Manzanera, who helps
himself to a late breakfast of toast and coffee.

2015 looks set to become a very busy year for
him. First, there’s a new solo work, The Sound Of Blue, then a new volume
of his Latin music project, Corroncho 2. Then there’s also the small matter
of David Gilmour’s forthcoming album, which Manzanera is involved
with. “It’s going very well,” he reveals. “I think it sounds fantastic,
people will be very happy.” Of course, Phil’s other outstanding business
concerns his old band, Roxy Music. “Last year, I said, T think our job is
done’,” he says. “Everyone thought, ‘Roxy’s split - again.’ Not at all! If we
fancied having another go, there’s no rules. That’s what’s great about
Roxy. It’s not over ’til you’re 10 feet under...”

You’ve produced a
lot of albums... is
there any artist
that has defeated
you and you’ve
‘left the building’?
David Gilmour
I find it quite difficult to produce
divas. I remember Monica Naranjo,
she was No 1 in Spain and South
America. I was meant to do three
tracks with her. At the time, my
studio here was under construction,
so I set up a vocal booth on the floor
below, with the trains going by
outside. She’s just come off from
million-selling albums, arrives
in Kilburn Lane and it all looks a
little dodgy. I said, “Don’t worry
about it, just go in there and it’ll be
fine.” Within a few hours, we had
constructed a track and it sounded
fantastic. I said, “Well, that’s it,
it’s done!” Well, says Naranjo, it can’t
be, it’s been done too quickly. So she
hires this flash studio in Lake
Lugano. We go there with her
husband, a co-producer- type guy,

who was a bit miffed that I was
doing the job and not him. Every
day, she’d re-sing these vocals. We
were in separate hotels, facing the
lake and I was bored out of my skull.
One day the husband rang and said,
“She doesn’t feel like going in
today.” I replied, “You know what? I
don’t fancy doing your album, I’m
gonna call a taxi to the airport. Do it
yourself. Good luck. Goodbye.” I just
took off; it was a liberating moment.
They tried for months to do it on their
own, but eventually they released
the version we did downstairs. It
was a huge, huge hit...

What do you recall of supporting
Bowie at the Rainbow gigs in ’72?

Anthony Stobart, Newcastle
I remember the first one, because
we were all wearing high-heel boots
with huge platforms. I walked in to
the foyer, down towards where the
seats were, and strained my ankle
in these bloody boots. The whole
gig was a nightmare for me, I was in
agony. We supported David at the
Croydon Greyhound, too. It was
a great gig. I turned up in the

afternoon to soundcheck and they
were all there, Bowie, Mick Ronson,
Trevor and Woody, all dressed in
Spiders gear. We just used to put our
clothes on before going on, not wear
them the whole time. So I walked
in, in jeans: “Oh, hi, I’m from
Roxy...” Oh God, they must have
been disappointed we didn’t come
in with all our outfits on! After that,
he invited us to support him at the
Rainbow. David’s come to our gigs
in this decade. He brought his band
along when Roxy played Radio City.

How did your riff end up on
Kanye & Jay Z’s “No Church In
The Wild”?

AlexFinlayson, Yangon, Burma
It’s a bizarre story. This guy called
88-Keys discovered a compilation
album that I put out in 1976,
Guitarissimo . The first track on it,
“K-Scope”, starts with the guitar riff,
so he probably thought, right,

I can sample that! He’s in New York
with Kanye West, who’s doing their

album at the Plaza Hotel.
They said “Have you got
any beats?” and 88-Keys
plays some, and they say,
“We’ll have that one,
thank you.” Which is the
guitar riff. I was driving
round Notting Hill with
my son Charlie, and the
phone went. “Hello, it’s
Roc-A-Fella Records here,
just wanted to tell you Jay Z
and Kanye West have
sampled your guitar.” I
said, “No, you made a
mistake. People always get
me mixed up with Ray
Manzarek.” So they played
it for me down the phone.
Anyway, it came out, was
huge, and it won a Grammy.

If you’re taken to Cuba when you’re
six, go to the Tropicana Club and
hear the grooves there, you can’t fail
to be influenced. And you have a
South American mother who’s into
cumbia, then you go to school in
Cuba for a bit, then Venezuela for a
bit, then learn to play the tiplay -
a 12-string Colombian instrument
your uncle buys for you in a little
dirt-track village three hours down
the mountain from Bogota. And
all your cousins play jazz piano in
New York. And your mother teaches
you how to play Cuban songs on
the guitar when you’re seven... Yes,
it’s going to be a big influence! ©

14 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

“Dylan came
onstage and didn’t
play any of the
songs we’d
rehearsed... but
he’s a genius, so
who cares?”

Manzanera with his
beloved red Gibson
Firebird: “It's been
on almost every
album I’ve made”

AMANDA EDWARDS/REDFERNS

AN AUDIENCE WITH...

©Asa fan of the Velvets, how did
you find working with John Cale,
as executive producer on Fear ?

Chris Parker ; London
Richard Williams, when he was
A&R at Island, asked me if I’d like to
work on it. I was 23 or 24. So I met
John. He had these songs, I got a
bass player and a drummer and we
rehearsed in a place off King’s Road
before we went into the studio. John
was absent a lot of the time. His wife
would ring up and I’d have to say
he’d popped out for a sandwich. So
I got a bit bored. I called Eno, “Why
don’t you come and treat my guitars
and we’ll just muck about?” We got
Richard and Linda Thompson
down. It was a really good album.
Then I did the “Heartbreak Hotel”
single with John. I worked with
Nico, too, on The End. John
produced it and he invited me down
to play. She’d come down from the
control room and say, “Phil, do not
do a thing he says, just do whatever
you want, ignore that maniac.” She
was fantastic, it was a total thrill.

what was it about
Roxy that made it special?
AndyMackay

The people, really. You know, I
failed the original audition. I was
in Quiet Sun with Bill MacCormick,
Charles Hayward and Dave Jarrett.
We sent tapes to Richard Williams
at Melody Maker. The following
week, the embryonic Roxy sent
in their demos. We read their

I tried to carry on some of
those ideas by having a
guitar version of the
VCS3 synthesiser that
was controlled by pedals
and using Revoxes. But I
was working with Brian
anyway for the next five
years in parallel with
Roxy. The first two
albums encapsulate
all the ideas that were
around at that point. But
then going forward, a
change was necessary
anyway. By integrating
a couple of mine and
Andy’s songs, we created
a different kind of
album. If Eno is asked
what his favourite Roxy album is,
he always says Stranded. I’m never
sure whether it’s because it is the
one he didn’t have to do anything
on, or whether he genuinely thinks
that’s the case.

What are your memories of the
801 Live project?

Sheldon Jury, Cheam
Eno, myself, and Bill and Ian
MacCormick went away to a little
cottage and came up with this idea
of doing a project that would only
last for six weeks. And we had put
together people who were very
technical and people who were
totally anti-technique and let them
fight it out and do one concert.
Actually there were three concerts
in the end: there was the warm-up,
Reading Festival and QEH. We
thought we’d record it, because
we’ve done all this bloody work
fighting it out. The recording has
been incredibly popular, but the
project was designed not to last any
longer or we’d have killed ourselves.

version...” The manager said, “Bob
might come on, he might not. If Bob
doesn’t come on, Jack, can you sing
his song?” To which Jack replied:
“I’m not bloody fucking singing
songs.” Bob would just play around
with us. At one point, he said, “Do
you know that Tex Mex song from
1948 called blah blah?” No-one
knew it, so I said, “I tell you what,
Bob. You start playing it and we’ll
pick it up.” He played it differently
every time, and people started
making excuses to leave the room...
But I knew he liked Richard
Thompson, so I rang up Richard
who was playing in Holland, and
said, “Richard, would you like to
play with Dylan?” “Yeah, sure!” He
arrived, so I sent him in before the
concert to find out what numbers
Bob was going to do. He came out
and said, “Right, we’re doing this
and this...” So we went onstage -
“It’s Bob Dylan!” - and of course he
doesn’t play any of the numbers we
rehearsed. We’re all looking at each
other, wondering what key he was
playing in... But you know, he’s a
genius. So who cares?

Your red Gibson Firebird must
be one of this planet’s most
beautiful guitars. Where and
when did you get it?

Jan Oldaeus, Manchester
I bought it from an ad in the back
of Melody Maker. It belonged to an
American guy who’d come over
with his parents. They were living
in a house in Regent’s Park. The
guitar I had when I was 9 or 10 was a
Hofner Galaxy in red. When I joined
Roxy, they insisted I had a white
Strat, which I wasn’t used to
playing, but I thought, ‘Sure, OK.’
Then I saw this ad for a red guitar
for £150.1 had no idea what it looked
like. I turned up, the guy opened
the door, I said, “Yeah, I’ll have it,
thank you very much.” He’d
ordered it in this unique colour. I
never saw another one like it, ever.
It’s been on almost every album I’ve
made since. It records beautifully.

The Sound Of Blue is released on
March 23 on Expression Records

How did Roxy Music’s sound
change with Eno’s departure
and how much do you
regret him leaving after
For Your Pleasure?

Jacqueline Brown, Leith
It became something different.

As Musical Director of the Seville
Guitar Legends festival, you
played with Dylan. What was
that like? GaryZel, Illinois
I got Jack Bruce on bass, I got the
best drummer in the world, I got
backing singers, I got everything
you could possibly want. So Bob
comes in with the manager.
Because it’s Guitar Legends I had
to say, “We want ‘All Along The
Watchtower’. But we’re not doing
your version, we’re doing Hendrix’s

happiest and most
fulfilling work in my life thanks
to your invitation to use your
studios, which you made feel like
a home from home every time I
came. I honestly don’t think I’d
ever have got through all the stuff
I’ve been able to do without your
generosity. Gracias, hombre...

Robert Wyatt

It goes right back to when I was at
school in Dulwich. Bill and Ian
MacCormick’s parents knew
Robert’s mum. He was our hero.

I met two people when I was 16/17:
Robert and David Gilmour. They
were in the coolest bands in
London, Soft Machine and the
Floyd. But Robert, he’s a special,
unique character. His ideas, what he
stands for. Vicariously through the
MacCormicks, I explored music,
jazz, freeform, psychedelia.
Anything Robert liked, we listened
to. So when Robert started to use my
studio in Chertsey, it was payback
for all the inspiration he’d given me.

I was surprised when he announced
last year that he wouldn’t be making
any more music, but only because
I’d been wanting him to play on
my album. I think he just wants
to take the pressure off having to
do another album, so he can do
whatever he feels like doing. But I
love all his justifications for it, they
just made me laugh! “Other people
are allowed to retire, why can’t I?”
He’s just so funny. ©

PHIL MANZANEftA
9^0

SILLMscCORMICK

wanckmoskmanJ

SIMON PHILLIPS
U.OYD WATSON

join Matching Mole, and said to me,
“What about Roxy? They’re looking
for a guitarist.” So I went to the
audition. They got David O’List in
from The Nice, but it didn’t work. So
I got a call asking whether I’d come
and mix the sound for Eno. It was at
some derelict house in Notting Hill.
When I turned up, Brian said, “Oh,
David’s not here, but here’s his
guitar. Fancy having a jam?” I had
an inkling this might happen, so I’d
secretly learned all their tracks.
They were tricking me and I was
tricking them. I joined just after
my birthday, the first week of
February. That was 43 years ago!

16 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

review, and thought, ‘This sounds
fantastic!’ Then Bill was asked to

N UNCUT.CO.UK

— F Log on to see who’s in
the hot-seat next month
and to post your questions!

Phil, you’ve
worked with a
huge range of
musicians from
Robert Wyatt to
David Gilmour -

Thanks, Phil.

That I’ve had the
chance, in the last
couple of decades,
to get through
some of the

SIMPLE MINDS

sparkle in tke^Qain

20Ts

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SUPER DELUXE BOX SET

m Remastered at Abbey Road
• BBC sessions, B-sides & extended mixes
m Unreleased Gfasgow Barrowlands concert
m Promos + TV footage
m Booklet with track by track annotation
m Reproduction tour programme

Also on: 2CD Deluxe f LP / 1GD / Download / Blu-ray Audio

amazon.co.uk

■f‘h*£rt

"AN ENTERTAINING CURIOSITY...
AN ENORMOUS SENSE OF FUN"
★★★★ THE GUARDIAN

TOUR DATES, MAY 2015:

FRI08 NOTTINOHAM RESCUE RMS
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NEW ALBUM RELEASED MARCH 2 M , INCLUDES THE SINULE LADY DREY

KATZENJAMMER.COM // PR0PELLERREC0RDIN6S.N0

Q PROPELLER
RECORDINGS

Lifting the cloud of
grief...SufjanStevens
in Brooklyn, New
York, February 2015

SUFJAN STEVENS

Laura Snapes | Emmanuel Afolabi

A very intimate interview
with SUFJAN STEVENS.

How road trips, rodeos,
all-out noise and a
reconciliation with his
dying mother culminated
in a return to folk music
for one of America’s finest
and most restless musical
spirits. “You have to cast
out your demons and rebel
against your traditions, but
you always have to crawl
back to the homeland.”

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 19

EMMANUEL AFOLABI/NOMADIC PHOTO

SUFJAN STEVENS

CARRIE & LOWELL

>TEVENS IS wearing two hats. A woolly blue number sits
atop his green trucker cap, the peak bent flush with his forehead,
the goofy effect belying his 39 years. At one point, describing his
sprawling approach to music, he has to stop himself from saying
he wears a lot of hats. “I - accessorise a lot,” he says, laughing.

icy early February morning, Stevens’ Brooklyn office is
temporarily homing the accessories from his most recent stage
show before they’re transferred to his storage facility. Last week,
he finished a six-night run at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music,
le performed Round-Up, leading a small ensemble in a
l, drone-oriented soundtrack over slow-motion footage
of a traditional Oregon rodeo. It is not entirely clear what role the
bag of gold foil fringing, hula-hoops wrapped in silver tinsel and
the painting of a white horse played, but Stevens found a strange
satisfaction in the project. “It’s really non-musical,” he says.
“I really wanted to evacuate from the artistic experience and
become almost like an observer, as a musician.”

He’s contemplating its viability as a touring
production, and may eventually record it, as he did
with 2009’s TheBQE , another BAM commission that
focused on the freeway five blocks up from his office.

But these projects often feel like distractions from the
main event: the acoustic reveries of Seven Swans,

Stevens’ meticulously realised song-suites about the
states of Michigan (2003) and Illinois (2005), and his
last album proper, 2010’s The Age Of Adz, a sprawling
electronic record that engulfed the listener in his state
of cosmic panic.

Being a fan of Stevens is somewhat predicated on
accepting his large hat collection. It was barely
surprising to see him make two hip-hop records with
rapper Serengeti and producer Son Lux. A 161-minute-

long 2012 Christmas release felt as predictable as socks and
clementines. But the difference with Round- Up is that
Stevens intended it as a distraction from the music he had
been writing. The songs he almost abandoned became
Carrie & Lowell, his seventh studio album: not one he
planned to make, but an attempt to survive the death of
his estranged mother and the ensuing two years of grief.

“For so long I had used my work as an emotional crutch,”
he says. “And this was the first time in my life where I
couldn’t sustain myself through my art. I couldn’t solve
anything through my music any more. Maybe I had been
manipulating my work over all these years - using it as a
defence mechanism or a distraction. But I couldn’t do that
any more, for some reason.”

I N DECEMBER 2012 , Stevens’ aunt called to say that his
mother had cancer. “‘Carrie’s in the ICU, she’s probably
not gonna live, if you wanna see her, this is your last
chance’,” he recalls. He had a few days with her in hospital
before she died.

The youngest of six, Stevens and his siblings grew up with
his father and step-mum after his mother left when he was
one. Over the next few years, they only saw her when they
visited their yia-yia and pappou in Detroit, until she married
her high-school sweetheart Lowell Brams when Stevens was
five. The kids spent three summers with the couple
in Eugene, Oregon, in the early 1980s, her most
stable period.

“She was a good mother when she had her
facilities together,” Stevens says. “And she had
nothing but love for us and the best intentions. But
she was really sick. She was very dysfunctional and
she had substance-abuse problems - she was an
alcoholic and a drug addict - and schizophrenic,
bipolar, really depressed. We were aware of that,
even as children. So we were very grateful for the
limited time that we had with her, and we knew that
it was finite. We had no delusions or expectations.”

When Stevens was seven or eight, Carrie and
Lowell split. “We didn’t see her for a long time after
that - she was off the map,” Stevens says, offering

20 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

a broad assessment of what she did next: “Not good things .”
As an adult, they occasionally met for lunch. “But outside
of a few letters, we didn’t see each other that much. And
I didn’t make an effort to see her. Why? That’s a good
question for therapy.

“They talk about the stages of grief,” he says, wearily.

“You go through denial and anger and depression,
acceptance - there’s these so-called patterns. But I found
myself experiencing inexplicable and uncategorisable
kinds of emotional states that were so far removed from
these traditional patterns of bereavement. Resentment.
Anger. Disappointment.”

He pauses. “Shame.”

For not having tried to communicate with her?

“No, ashamed of her.”

Stevens doesn’t want to talk about this record, but sees
it as a professional duty - his success underwrites the
existence of his record label, Asthmatic Kitty, which has
nine employees. He evades eye contact but talks about
his grief with disarming candour, and only refuses two
questions: one about his love life, and the other about
a lyric in the title-track, “She breaks my arm ”, when asked
if it relates to his mother.

The line is barely
noticeable, a concealed

spine in the song’s
whispered banjo flutter.
It’s emblematic of
Carrie & Lowell's
aesthetic: profoundly
heartbreaking,
beautiful finger-picked
folk songs that shroud
gut-wrenching truths
about love, death and
abandonment. “Fourth
Of July” traces the
terrible intimacy of a
hospital deathbed.

“No Shade In The
Shadow Of The Cross”
is a portrait of self-destruction. “iVo reason to live", he sings
on “Should Have Known Better”. Asked whether the abusive
relationship described in “Drawn To The Blood” was his
own, he simply answers, “Yes.”

“I found myself kind of feeling like my mother’s ghost was
inhabiting me,” he says. “I had a lot of pretty dark moments.
Oh god, it’s over, though, I’m so glad it’s over.”

“The Only Thing” marks both the nadir of Stevens’
emotional state during that time, and the first sign of
light: “The only thing that keeps me from cutting my
arm/Cross-hatch, warm bath, Holiday Inn after dark/

Signs and wonders: water stain writing the wall/Daniel's
message, blood of the moon on us all".

He slowly recovered by letting in “small encounters
of hope in very necessary doses,” he says: prayer, his
young niece, the bike tours he took across America,
staying in tents, hotels or his car, and cycling vast,
solitary routes by day. “I went over North Dakota and
Montana and Wyoming. And then eastern Oregon
and eastern Washington were really unfamiliar and
exciting to me because of how empty and vast and
beautiful it was. I had my guitars with me so I wrote
and recorded on that road trip.”

He travelled cross-country to see friends with
studios, who inadvertently became part of Carrie
& Lowell. There was no clear plan. “I was just
travelling a lot and working with other people
because it was convenient and I wanted to engage
socially lest I lose myself in isolation. A lot of those
people and their participation, it really fed me,
fuelled me, encouraged me.”

Bella Union solo artist Laura Veirs recalls his

FOUND
MYSELF
FEELING
LIKEMY
MOTHER’S
GHOST WAS
INHABITING
ME...”

BUYERS’GUIDE

SEVEN SWANS

ATIC

A look at Sufjan's
unique catalogue

A SUN CAME

Stevens' debut
album contains
the dark matter for
all his future LPs:
gentle folk, crackling
electronica,

Comprising just his
voice, banjo, acoustic
guitar and woodwind,
Seven Swans
explores Stevens'

- relationship to God,
though he has said he regrets opening
his faith up for public scrutiny.

biblical and literary allusions, and
abject zaniness.

ENJOY YOUR
RABBIT

ASTHMATIC KITTY,2001

This electronic song
cycle about the
Chinese zodiac
evoked Aphex Twin,
" Four Tet's more
pastoral inclinations, and the
soundtracks to Disneyland theme park
rides. In 2009 he re-recorded and
re-released it as Run Rabbit Run with
string quartet Osso.

This 24 -song epic
contains his three
best-known numbers:
the rousing
“Chicago”; “John
“ Wayne Gacy Jr”,

a folk ballad about the serial killer; and
the devastating “Casimir Pulaski Day”,
about a friend's death from cancer.

6/10

GREETINGS
FROM
MICHIGAN:
THE GREAT
LAKE STATE

ASTHMATIC KITTY,2003

A mournful folk
meditation on his

Stevens explored
existential doubt
and his physical
wellbeing with no
— small amount of
neurosis in this period, first on the
“All Delighted People” EP, and then
this collapsing star of a record.

SUFJAN STEVENS CARRIE &
LOWELL

2015

CARRIE & LOWELL

9/10

childhood home state. Laments for
Detroit's disenfranchised sit alongside
sad indictments of an absent mother
on “Romulus”.

Refined folk
arrangements
backing startlingly
clear-headed
- recollections
of Stevens' experiences with
abandonment. A painful but rewarding
listen, with “Fourth Of July” and “The
Only Thing” among his finest songs.

impromptu visit to her hometown of Portland
about 18 months ago. They had met in 2005, when
he asked her to support on the Illinois tour. “It was
just one song, one hour, and then he left. He did
not tell me anything about them. There were a
couple of references to the state of Oregon, but
that’s all I can say.”

In August 2013, Stevens travelled to Eau Claire,
Wisconsin, to see Brian Joseph, who had been
his live sound engineer and now works in Justin
Vernon’s April Base studio. There he played with
Casey Foubert, Ben Lester, and Sean Carey, who
drums with Bon Iver and releases solo albums on
Jagjaguwar as S Carey.

“It’s a pretty small town so you often end up
recording on things that are sort of spontaneous,”
says Carey. “When we got there Sufjan was out
so we started working and when he came in we
worked for a little while before we even stopped
and introduced ourselves. As the night got on it
got looser and it was really fun. We recorded all
night-I got home at 5am.” ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 21

EMMANUEL AFOLABI/NOMADIC PHOTO

One of the seven swans
come to life... Stevens
performs in Brooklyn's
Prospect Park, NYC,
August 2,2011

NEWYDRKSTATEDFMIND

Sufjan Stevens assesses his place in NYC's music scene...

I’M NOT
EXPLOITING
MYMISERY
-IFTHAT’S
HOW IT
SEEMS, I’VE
FAILED AS
AN ARTIST”

A UGMENTED ONLY WITH piano and occasional

gossamer sy nths, Carrie & Lowell 9 s folky palette has
drawn comparisons to Stevens’ 2004 breakout, Seven
Swans. While they share an aesthetic, he admits Swans was
written for utilitarian purposes, allowing him to play solo
acoustic gigs. In recent years, it felt like a sound confined to
his past: around the release of The Age Of Adz, Stevens
frequently said that his interests were primarily in all-out
noise. “I was sick of my voice and I was sick of the strummy-
strum acoustic guitar song,” he told The New York Times.

Faltering, he explains
why he returned to the
ballad form. “I just didn’t
feel like I needed to... work
through the death of my
mother with noise, but
with words.” Carrie &
Lowell is “the most formal
record” he’s ever made,
he says, repeatedly saying
it contains “no art”.

“I’m not saying these
things disparagingly,”
he says when accused of
self-flagellation, “but as a
non-evaluative, objective
description. I definitely felt
the desire to rewind and
return to a more traditional form. You have to cast out your
demons and rebel against your traditions and pursue your
interests through the adventure of discovery, but you always
have to crawl back to the homeland like the prodigal son.”

Lowell Brams kickstarted Stevens’ musical discovery.
There was no music, art or TV at home with his dad and
stepmother in Detroit, who taught and educated their kids
at the Waldorf School where the emphasis was on “the
imagination, and eradicating the media accessories from
your life in order to cultivate the liveliness of your mind,”
he says. “Our house was almost sterilised.” That first
summer in Eugene, Brams introduced Stevens and his
siblings to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder,

Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, Frank Zappa. “The Wipers were
his favourite band,” says Stevens. “It was as if he had
opened up a Pandora’s Box, and we were so thrilled.

It was like sensory overload - we would record these
radio shows, DJ and do skits.”

Brams is now 63 and lives in Lander, Wyoming. He and
Stevens founded Asthmatic Kitty in 1999, though he is slowly
stepping back from its day-to-day running. After Carrie and
Lowell separated, Brams continued to see Stevens and his
siblings, bringing them cassette tapes. On one trip back
from the West Coast, he visited the family home in Petoskey,
Michigan, and heard a 15-year-old Stevens’ first original
compositions. “I’d heard him playing the piano earlier, but
when I stopped by that time he played things on his little
Casio - like classical piano concertos, but they were his own.
That’s when I thought, ‘Wow! That’s really unusual.’”

The pair grew closer when Stevens attended Hope College
in Holland, Michigan, where Brams was living in order to

M Y AFFILIATIONS ARE all
over the map because I’m
interested in sound collage,
improvisation, noise and hip-hop, but
I also occasionally will do these
[Brooklyn Academy of Music]
commissions or write music for
a ballet. Ultimately, I’m a folk
songwriter with a wild imagination.

“What’s so remarkable about NYC
is the resources available to us.

There are fewer and fewer divisions
between schools and genres,
musically speaking. The fundamental
apportioning of scenes is largely

economic at this point. The division
between Uptown and Downtown
music, that’s really an economic term.
It becomes really confused by the
dissemination of power and money
in the music industry in general.

“I think that’s why it’s really easy
now to find yourself in these unusual
environments, whether you’re in a
theatre or an opera house or a dance
hall or a club - they’re all different
platforms for the same thing. The
ticket price is the one signifier though,
you know. That’s where the economics
identifies the audience.”

SUF1AN STEVENS

22 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

take care of his elderly parents. He drove Stevens’ folk-rock
band Marzuki to gigs and eventually replaced him on organ
duties in garage party band Con Los Dudes when Marzuki
briefly moved to New York. When they split and crawled
back home, Asthmatic Kitty was born. In 2000, Stevens’
debut album, A Sun Came , became the label’s first release.

Brams won’t pick a favourite of Stevens’ records, but says
he cried when he heard the three songs that would open
Michigan . He had no qualms about having his name on
Stevens’ new record. “I am impressed about the music he’s
done and the way he works, and who am I to question his
creative decisions?” he says. “They always seem to be right.”

I T WAS WHILE Stevens was travelling around the US
that he witnessed Oregon’s famed Pendleton Round-Up,
one of the world’s 10 biggest rodeos. Beguiled, he
commissioned filmmakers Aaron and Alex Craig to capture
it; when Stevens reviewed the footage, he realised there was
a viable idea there, which he took to the Brooklyn Academy
Of Music last summer. They commissioned a January 2015
run. “I had to scramble quickly to put it together,” says
Stevens. “There was so little time to do it that I didn’t even
stress. And actually the footage was so fully realised that
I didn’t feel the need to wrestle out meaning or substance
from it. I just felt like a steward.”

Embarking on Round- Up was a gamble: working on
The BQE in 2007 induced within Stevens a profound
existential and artistic crisis about the purpose of art
after he had spent nine months attempting to wrangle
significance from 35 miles
of concrete. “It didn’t really
have any meaning in the
end,” he says. “It was
a struggle.”

Around that time, Stevens
was struck with a chronic,
mysterious illness. Once he
had recovered, he wrote The
Age Of Adz as an exploration
of his creative and physical
wellbeing: “The purity and
authenticity of voice versus
the desire for discovery and
innovation,” he says.

“Wanting to seek out new
worlds and also wanting to

know myself more fully and more clearly. Those two
experiences or creative states of being don’t always
cohabitatewell.”

Having the potential follow-up to Adz in the midst of
depression, Stevens felt he lacked “responsible authorship
for the material”. Round-Up seemed like the perfect fresh
start, so he abandoned the “30 or 40” grief-stricken songs
he had been disparately working on. “I was finally over my
depression and over my grief as well, and entering a new
season of hope,” he says. “The rodeo was the perfect kind of
distraction because it’s meaningless - it was a project based
on aesthetics and design and beauty and meditation, it was
very clearly organised.”

His friends, however, weren’t about to let him ditch the
other material. “Anybody who heard that album was like,
‘you have to put this out yesterday’,” says composer Nico
Muhly. “I have like, 60 emails where I was literally like, ‘put
it out’, both as subject and content.” Manhattan-based
composer Thomas Bartlett got in touch last summer to ask
what was going on with the music. Stevens invited him
to his studio to hear it.

“He said he felt a little bit lost with it, that he had been
working on it for some years and didn’t really have a
sense of where the record was going, or if he had
anything at all,” says Bartlett, who insisted that
Stevens make him a CD of rough mixes that he would

Sufjan Stevens'
other projects

SISYPHUS

Formerly known as S/S/S,
Sisyphus is a hip-hop trio
formed of Sufjan Stevens,
producer Son Lux and
rapper Serengeti.

7=

ric/F? - -a

<

i

\:..P
111■

My(
I) trio

thical hip-hop

Sisyphus

PLANETARIUM

In March 2012, Stevens,
Nico Muhly and The
National’s Bryce Dessner
premiered this cosmic
suite in Holland. Plans
to record it have been
continually thwarted
by the composers’
busy schedules.

THE NATIONAL

Stevens has appeared on
the Brooklyn band’s last
three albums, and has
twice made appearances
with them in London. The
band’s guitarists, Aaron
and Bryce Dessner, have
played on several of
Stevens’ records.

RUSIETHUMAS

Stevens produced the
Detroit-based comedian’s
These Friends Of Mine LP
in 2006, and she has
frequently collaborated
with him, notably as her
character Sheila Saputo
on his ’12 Christmas tour.

THEWELGOMEWAGON

In 2008, Stevens
produced the debut
by this Williamsburg
Presbyterian minister
and his wife. The
experience pushed
Stevens towards
creating more music
in social situations,
rather than alone.

take on his summer holiday. “There were some outliers:
electronic things, or sometimes four versions of the same
song, with different lyrics or a radically different
approach musically.”

There was one aspect to cull immediately. Michigan
and Illinois were the first entries in a project whereby
Stevens apparently intended to document the historical
quirk and emotional resonance of all 50 states in song. He
eventually abandoned the idea, calling it a promotional
gimmick. But Carrie & Lowell almost became “Oregon”
until Bartlett talked him out of it. With no criticism
implied, he calls Stevens’ state records “complicated
misdirection and an architecture by which he could
actually write about himself. I asked him to let go of the
idea that this was an Oregon record and just allow it to
be what it really feels like it is, which is a very, very
personal record.”

Bartlett returned from vacation with the tracklist,
made Stevens change some titles and vocals, and
remixed it. “It all came together within a month,” says
Stevens. “He doesn’t fuck around. I wouldn’t have
wanted to have made such a direct and depressing
album, but he called me out on my bullshit and said, just
be honest to this experience and stop trying so hard. I
don’t think I would have made this record without him.”

E VEN IF HE’D rather not discuss specifics, Stevens
is glad that he’s releasing Carrie & Lowell: hopeful
about its universality and the path it might offer
fans out of their own grief. The experience has also
taught him a lot about living more healthily, a process
that has included “eradicating resentment, and refusing
to feel entitled or take anything for granted,” he says.

Where Adz is manic and frazzled, Carrie & Lowell is
utterly lucid. “When you’re met with a very tragic event,
you have to take stock of what’s real internally and
emotionally and allow yourself to express those
feelings,” he says. “Up until the death of my mother,

I’d evaded that deepness of feeling in general. But grief
is an extremely refining process. I felt I needed to be
honest with my feelings for the first time.”

To stay on course, he must remain nearsighted: “I have
a problem when I start thinking cosmically because I lose
sight of the exact nature of joy in my life, and I obscure it
with grand, universal anxiety,” he says. But the album
doesn’t indicate any kind of permanent musical volte-
face: Lowell Brams mentions an “electronic noise
album” that the pair are finishing. Before that, though,
Stevens will make his first UK outdoor festival
appearance headlining End Of The Road in September.
It’s an appearance 10 years in the making, but perhaps
strange timing given the quietness of the record. “It’s
gonna be a challenge,” says Stevens. “I think it would
be disingenuous to engage with the full-throttle back
catalogue. So don’t come expecting a party.”

When Stevens returns to this office after the Carrie
& Lowell tour is over, there will be no cute props
awaiting transfer to his prosaic personal archive.

Instead, his survival and recovery is its legacy.

“Love is incomprehensible,” he says. “It’s a very
simple and stupid statement, but it feels extremely
profound and necessary and helpful for me right
now to wave that banner. There is no justice in love
or in death, but I think that we, as living survivors of

this world and this life, have a duty to give testament
to a deeper joy that we’ve been given. I’m not
exploiting my misery -1 don’t want to do that.

If that’s how the record comes across then I’ve
failed as an artist.” ©

Sufjan Stevens ’ new album Carrie & Lowell is
released by Asthmatic Kitty on March 30

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 23

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR BAD SEED LTD.

NICK CAVE S THE BAD SEEDS

“Taking
risks with
like-minded

people”

.. .That’s how, after upwards of 20 years with
NICK CAVE AND THE BAD S EEDS, multi-
instrumentalist WARREN ELLIS describes the way
they go about their work. As the band celebrate
their legacy with the release of a set of heavyweight
vinyl remasters, Warren gives us the inside story
of the Bad Seeds. Scary silences, boils, Australian
goths — and, of course, the evolving work of this
enduring musical force

Story: John Robinson | Photograph: KevorkDjansezian

24 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

SAM BARKER

The Bad Seeds,2002: (l-r)

Blixa Bargeld, Thomas Wydler,
Jim Sclavunos, NickCave,
Martin Casey, Conway Savage,
Mick Harvey and Warren Ellis

N

ICK WAS ONE of
those kind of guys.

You always knew
when he was
around. There
was always a
certain sense
of an occasion
seeing the band
in Melbourne at
Christmas time

when we’d all be back from tours. He’s always been
one of those characters. He had this reputation.

I was aware of The Birthday Party. I moved to
Melbourne from the country, and they loomed
over a certain environment there. They had this
incredible reputation for their live show, and they
seemed to have spawned so many imitators as well,
they left this real mark on the landscape there. I
went to try and see one of their shows on the last
tour, but I passed out in the lobby in the venue, so
I never actually saw them live.

When they came back from Europe, it seemed like they’d
all kind of grown a foot or something, they seemed
mythical. It was really extraordinary. When you’re in a
band and you leave Australia, and try and make it outside
of there, or just play some shows, it does a certain thing to
you, whether you succeed or not.

There was a lot of exciting stuff going on musically...
people really trying to challenge themselves, and take risks
and go as far out there as they could. You’d go down on a
Thursday night to the Prince Of Wales in St Kilda and there’d
be half a dozen bands on, and some of the stuff that you’d
see would be so insane, and the crowds were kind of mad,
and everybody was off their brains. It seemed like if you

“I tried
to do the
Bad Seeds
session
straight... I
don’otnow
what I was
thinking!”

were in a band it was important to challenge people.

It really ran against the popular music of the day,
which was much straighter. The alternative scene
was so far apart from that, it was drawing
influences from elsewhere, the Stooges, that kind
of thing. You had bands like The Saints, then Ed
[Kuepper] went on to form the Laughing Clowns and
you had The Triffids there - it all totally ran at odds
with the popular music scene of the day.

If you were a goth in Australia you had to be very
dedicated because summers are brutal, particularly
the more north you go, it’s really... respect for
anybody that can carry on with the pointy-shoed
look, and with the hair, because it’s brutal. You saw
some people who suffered incredibly for their art,
particularly around December and January.

There was this real sense of expectation when
Nick came back with the Bad Seeds: ‘What’s going
to happen?’ Because The Birthday Party sort of
imploded, and they were the genuinely exciting
band that came from Australia at the time.

When [second Bad Seeds album, 1985’s] The Firstborn Is
Dead came out, it really seemed to draw the line. They just
seemed to keep challenging everybody. So I mean, I was
very aware of them, and had been to see them a bunch of
times before I started playing with them much later on.

I sort of crossed paths with Nick in the 1980s in places.
Y’know, in various... places, but the first time I kind of met
him, like in an official sense, was probably after.

I WENT TO PLAY on Let Love In [1994 ]. I was playing with
Dave McComb, who was in Melbourne at the time. Dave
had kind of taken me under his wing. I was already
playing in The Dirty Three, then I started playing with Dave
and The Blackeyed Susans. Then Dave did his solo record

26 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

and he took me in the band. I met Mick [Harvey] at that
point, when Mick was living in Sydney.

Mick got me in to play a string part that he’d written for
a couple of songs on Let Love In. They were recording in
Sydney. It was kind of chaos, I’d never seen anything like it,
actually. They were all doing different things, there was just
this creative energy. There was just notes everywhere, and
Nick had this checklist, and the piano was covered in lyrics,
stuff all over it. They had two studios running, one was
mixing and the other one was doing overdubs. Y’know, it
was really impressive to see.

Blixa [Bargeld] was there. For me, it was the first time I’d
met a lot of these people I’d previously seen onstage and in
magazines and stuff like that. So to suddenly see them in
there doing what they do, it was kind of... impressive.

Mick Harvey had written this arrangement, a really great
arrangement for the song [Warrenplays on “Ain’t Gonna
Rain Anymore” and “Do You Love Me Part 2”] and I went in
there with this other fiddle player. For me it was very
challenging because I’m not a technically adept player
particularly when it comes to reading [music] and getting
up high and stuff like that. I have a very specific relation
with intonation. We have a love-hate relationship.

I remember the whole thing being quite a struggle for me,
on many levels, trying to play the part even though it wasn’t
particularly difficult. I guess it was thrilling to be hearing

Barry Adamson with
Mick Harvey and

Blixa Bargeld,1985 *

BARRY ADAMSON: there

along and took it out there into another
place, too, but I think some of it is from
the early Bad Seeds days, as well.

“Recently, we were doing the solo
shows and we were, I think, on From
Her To Eternity, awestruck how detailed
it was, but at the same time empty and

these new tracks that hadn’t even been out yet or
anything. That was exciting...

It was a very new experience for me. Everybody was
focused and trying to do something. When you go into
the studio you are in there for a limited amount of time
and you know that, so there’s a real intention to do
something, and you want to do the job, so you get in
there and you have a small window and that’s it.

It creates kind of a great... cocoon in which to work
and the rest of the world doesn’t matter for that week
or 10 days. It was a real laboratory in there. I keep saying
energy, but this energy... everybody walking around and
I was trying to play, and read a score - which I hadn’t
done for a long time, read notes. And, you know, I
decided to do the session straight as I figured that was
a good time to try... I don’t know what I was thinking!

But anyway I just remember it being sweaty and nerve-
wracking. I met Nick again briefly, but he was off -1
don’t know what they were doing, mixing a song, I think.

at the beginning and there
again now...

A T*E CAME TOGETHER
\ /\ I after The Birthday Party,
V V an incredible sort of
force. It was almost being a kind of...
cinema, being a backdrop, if you
like, to Nick’s eloquence. As an
instrumentalist, you try and wrap
yourself around the words.

“The way we were operating, there
was a lot of sort of tension internally and
externally: the band was almost on the
edge of catastrophic collapse. It was a
war of no words.

“The Bad Seeds has thrived on an idea,
that if every character is strong, that it
sort of rubs up against itself. The
language of the Bad Seeds was sort of
forged then. Of course, Warren came

also just so poignant, in what it was
trying to profess musically. We were all
blown away.

“There’s a story about Beethoven
where he writes down the note G on a
score and he rubs it out and puts another
note, and he rubs it out, and the quill
almost goes through the paper, he puts
more pieces of paper on the top and
there’s like this mountain of paper and
he ends up writing a G. Sort of
possessed, it was like that!

“What was interesting coming back
in and walking into the studio while
they’re recording Push The Sky Away,
it was almost calm. So quiet. I have to
remind myself they’ve been together for
all that time, they know each other
inside out, and they’re working together
inside out. For me it’s sort of watching a
television. It’s anthropological.”

I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the situation; I knew
that wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It never gets you
anywhere, in any situation, to be overwhelmed by things.
So... I was just trying to do what was asked of me, really.

I wasn’t in there to provide any musical ideas.

T HE BAD SEEDS has always had a very solid

nucleus. As an album comes up, there’s a desire to
kind of expand things and to take things on from
the last recording. The more records you make, you try to
develop the sound or the approach and that means
getting more people in to cover the ground. They
didn’t want to repeat themselves.

There was never any formal discussion. I think
Nick said, “You wanna come in for a day?” on Murder
Ballads and then at the end of the day he said, “Do you
wanna come in tomorrow?” and I said, “Yeah, sure,”
and I played on a couple of songs. I remember there
was a point, we were messing around with a song
and I suggested something about some chords.

Later on, Conway [Savage, keyboards] told me that
there was this sort of silence, like, “OK, well, get ready
for it - here it comes.” And that I could have been ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 27

EVERETT COLLECTION/REX; DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES

NICKCAVE&THEBAD SEEDS

© asked to leave at that point. But we just sort of kept
messing around. And again it was another occasion I
decided to try and do it straight, which was ridiculous.

For some sort of reason any time I went in to the studio,

I decided that was the day I’d be on my best behaviour.

I finished up a big European tour with Dirty Three,
which was interesting [chuckles]. They thought I had a
stroke on the tour -1 was in hospital. They thought I had
AIDS and all this. Then I broke out in all these boils, so it
seemed like the odds were against me. So we cancelled
the rest of the tour. Then Nick called me and said, “Hey
we’re going to do a couple of dates in South America. Do
you wanna come?” I said, “I’m not really in showroom
condition,” and he said, “Look, that’s fine, just come along,
have some fun.” So I went along to that. I moved to London
at that point, they went in and did The Boatman's Call and
Nick asked me to if I’d like to come in, play on some tracks.

T HE BAD SEEDS are people with very strong

personalities who have been doing it for most of
their lives. The group had developed this dynamic.
Individuals were in there for a reason, to do what they
brought to the table, which was pretty interesting,
because they played as a group.

They would work out the material, and how to play it.

You had Blixa: he’s still one of the greatest guitar players,
he’s so extraordinary as a musician and at what he does,
and he had a very solid opinion what he liked and what he
didn’t like. You also had Mick who had strong opinions as
well and you know, was very forceful musically on a lot of
things. And then there was Nick. You could see that they
were a group of people who had been working together,
and that it was for a reason they were working together.

One of the fantastic things about a group is the dynamics
in there and the way of working, that you don’t get when
you’re on your own because you’re just banging your head
against the wall after a while. They were bouncing off each
other, but were also on the same page. Nick would have very
strong ideas; there was not a lot of discussion. With The
Boatman's Call in particular, he had very strong ideas about
what he wanted for that record, about pegging it right back.
The great thing about the band is that it was always about
the songs, it wasn’t about people trying to put their own
stamp on the music, it was really about what the songs
needed and what was required.

Nick is much more interested in what’s coming up
than what you’ve already done. If it’s gonna evolve, the
opportunity has to be there, and for the opportunity to be
there you need people that will let that happen. It’s not
even like there was ever any discussion about anything,
like how it’s going to evolve or something like that, it’s just
the desire that it happens. Each record, you would do what
was required.

Barry

Adamson

EYEWITNESS!

NICK CAVE IN

■ REMEMBER
I doing one of
I my tours and
rolling into Sydney, I
think it was, and the
town hall and arts
centre there had
these massive, like
huge, portraits of
successful Australians,
and he was one of
them and I just
thought, 'Jesus, I didn’t
realise.’ Because in the
old days, you know, we’d
rock up at the airport and
wait for a guitar on its
own, with no case, to
come round the luggage
carousel. Maybe a
drumstick, then we’d go
'Whose is that? It’s not
mine’, that sort of thing...
so those things kind of
catch me, and then I just
go, 'You know what, he’s
so committed to his art,
it’s a great thing to
witness and be around.’”

I don’t know how it was in the early days, but when you
listen to those early records there’s such an attempt to
move away, to subvert the kind of whole rock’n’roll thing,
and yet it was very much rooted in rock’n’roll, which is
always kind of fascinating. There’s so much more coming
out. It’s not like rock’n’roll, there was so much space:
things were in a different spot than they had been.
Different elements had different roles to do, the guitar
wasn’t like what you imagined. It was always surprising
the next record they would put out.

By the time I was coming in, they really developed a way

of working... there was
quite often not a lot of
conversation: it was
instinctive. They knew
whether they had been
somewhere before or
not and that meant they
would try something
else. When I started
being in there, it was very
much about early takes
and nailing it really early
on, it wasn’t like constant
sort of playing over and
over again.

TUPELO

NICK 'W
CAV E

if m.

HEN I
STARTED
playing in

the Bad Seeds, we were
playing some of the older
numbers like “The Mercy
Seat” and “Tupelo”, but
you’d be doing them a
disservice, and yourself a disservice as well, if you tried to
copy previous versions... there’s just no point. What Blixa
does is so unique - you can make a kind of ballpark sound
but you have to realise what you need to leave behind and
hopefully work out your own take on it.

It was a steep learning curve because it was about what
I didn't do. People had this great control and restraint -
Blixa was amazing, he could play and then fall back with
impeccable timing. It goes against all the stereotypes of a
guitar player. When I got in, there was so much going on
already, finding a place was interesting. With the Dirty
Three there was a start and a stop and whatever happened
in the middle was anyone’s guess.

As the lineup has changed my involvement has changed.
It’s determined by what’s required. Has it ruffled feathers
me being Nick’s foil? I had lunch with Blixa and he wasn’t
going on about anything like that. Mick, I believe he said he
didn’t feel like he was being utilised as he would have liked

towards the end, but he’s never said anything to me about
it. Blixa seemed to want to do other things. Nick’s and my
relationship is something that’s developed over the years,
we’ve always enjoyed playing together. When it doesn’t feel
like it’s evolving, it’ll be time to move on.

The thing about Nick is, Nick works. He loves to work, he
has this incredible drive and a belief in what he’s doing.

He’s always challenging himself. He’s very encouraging.

I remember buying a mandolin - in 2000 or so, before folk
music was popular - and he said, “What an inspired
choice.” He doesn’t seem to stop. People talk about “the
drug years” and so on, but he just works non-stop. He won’t
let things go: this thing of trying to get things through,
not giving up on an idea. There’s things we’ve had for 10
years that we’re trying to get through and probably never
will. It’s funny.

The history of the Bad Seeds makes for a sense of liberty:
when you’ve done a certain number of records the more
constraints are on you - there are more things you can’t do
again. You’re forced to look elsewhere and that’s the great

thing about being in a band
that has constant players -
the idea of taking risks with
like-minded people.

A lot ofitisabouta
moment and hoping it goes
somewhere. Sometimes you
think, is this ever going to
work? And if you do get
through it, then from that
point on it will move in a
different way. Like in the
way you might feel after
hearing The Velvet
Underground: that things
will never be the same again
afterwards.

For me, I really
enjoy it when you
crack a song that
looked like it
wasn’t going to
make it. I find it
hard to let go of
the ones that
aren’t working,
and get it so that
it’s now going
somewhere. It’s
always about the
last thing you’ve
done. After a rowdy
record like Murder

Ballads - with Boatman's Call , it was really interesting
watching everyone try to fit in there.

But Nick is the one constant. Has he changed? I guess he
just seems... a bit more concise. He used to let things sprawl,
but he cuts things down now. The last couple of records are
more about editing - he seems to rein it in a bit and it seems
to create unknown things.

Nick always had the authority. I don’t think there’s ever
been any confusion about that. Nick’s written every kind of
lyric for the whole thing except, you know, a couple of them.
As far as I could see, if he didn’t come in with the song, or
when he was ready to do something, then the band would
go. The great thing about the Bad Seeds is that you just
understood how things were. Thank God not everybody
in there is trying to be the singer. ©

“The thing
about Nick
is, Nick
works.
He has this
incredible
drive and
belief...”

Fourteen Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds albums have
been remastered for vinyl reissue; Nick Cave plays the UK
in April and May

...But it’s the Bad Seeds who make it work, says NICK CAVE

N ICK CAVE: “ WHAT we all
understand in the Bad
Seeds is when we go into
the studio we’re making it
like the first record, not
like the 15th record. That’s a different
way of looking at things. I feel the legacy
is significant -1 look at it as a large body
of work -1 know that exists and that
hangs heavy over the writing process,
when I go into my office to write, but it’s
something I have to shed when I go into
the studio. The recording process is
about forgetting as much as anything
else - about leaving the weight of what
you’ve done before outside the studio
walls and looking at things in a new
way. Mostly we achieve
that - our records aren’t
just reactive to what
we’ve done before.

“Right from the start
I’ve been a collaborator
-1 wouldn’t be able to
do what I do if I didn’t
have someone else.

These people are
significantly better
and more natural
musicians than I am.

I can write a song and
all that sort of stuff
obviously, but the

implementing of that song and doing
it in interesting ways is very much a
collaborative effort.

“There’s different types of
collaboration: Mick Harvey, I can’t see
any similarities between working with
him and working with Warren. One’s
not more successful than the other,
they’re just different things. The Bad
Seeds have an uncanny way of just
understanding the process - fitting into
it and serving the song in some way.

“People brought into the way we
record find it strange - it’s so intuitive
and very few takes are done. No-one gets
the chance to work things out. Maybe
that’s a fault in our records - but maybe
that’s the beauty of
them, as well. Maybe we
sacrifice development of
an idea because of that,
but the records have an
adventuring spirit that
you lose once you truly
understand what a song
is about. The way a song
reveals itself to you is very
much a live thing.”

Nick Cave provides
the introduction to the
Ultimate Music Guide:
Nick Cave

IIE niTllir mm INC m nm \imiumh

NICKCAVE

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 29

JACK ROBINSON/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

“We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind from where we came.”

THE 30
GREATEST
SONGS OF

From “Both Sides, Now” to Travelogue, incorporating Laurel Canyon
folk reveries, singer-songwriter milestones, jazz adventures and so much more,
Uncut chronologically assesses the finest work of a singer-songwriter supreme.
Thirty astonishing songs, chosen by ROBERT PLANT, PINK FLOYD, RADIOHEAD,
GRAHAM NASH, REM, LAURA MARLING, ROGER McGUINN, ELBOW and many
more collaborators, contemporaries and starry-eyed acolytes. “She’s probably,”
says a still-devoted DAVID CROSBY, “the best writer of us all...”

Portraits: Jack Robinson

30 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

A photographer’s contact
sheet ofJoni Mitchell, shot for
Vogue, November20,1968

F |i

| ’|| \

■t' i i

w

i

mi x ’ I

HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS; NIALL REDDY

MITCHELL

I DON’T THINK THERE’S a singer-songwriter in the world that
hasn’t been affected by Joni,” David Crosby tells Uncut. “You
want to be that good, we all did. We all do.” As Crosby attests, in
a career spanning almost half a century of music, Joni Mitchell
has proved enduringly influential. During her artistic prime,
she ploughed indefatigably through a wide variety of styles -
from stark confessionals to jazz - in an astonishingly short
period of time; her sophisticated work transcending the
conventional songcraft of her many like-minded peers. Lately, there have been
encouraging signs of activity. Towards the end of last year, she curated her own
retrospective boxset, Love Has Many Faces, while in January 2015 she was unveiled
as the face of a new Saint Laurent ad campaign.

she did Both Sides Now in 2000, where she
revisited some other older songs. To me, she’s
almost like Ella Fitzgerald on that record and I
found it really interesting, having “A Case Of
You” from Blue, and also “Both Sides, Now”, just
comparing the two tracks; the younger Joni
Mitchell, and then the wisdom and the depth
that comes through in the version on Both Sides
Now. When you hear the later version, you
genuinely believe that she’s really had the life
that backs up the sentiment in the song. Her
voice has dropped in pitch, and for some people
that would be a huge worry, but actually she’s
used that to her advantage. It’s like the before
and after of songs, and it feels in some way like
the two versions are bookends in her work.

On this occasion, we have chosen to look back at some of her greatest songs
with help from a panel of her collaborators, friends and famous fans. Along the
way, we hear tales involving picnics with Eric Clapton, hand-knitted sweaters, a
birthday cake in the shape of a guitar, car journeys across Canada, late-night visits

IbWit

2 MORNING
MORGANTOWN

Ladies Of The Canyon, 1970

to bowling alleys and one eye-watering early morning encounter with the Flying
Squad. One former paramour, we learn, admits he still sends her flowers every
year for her birthday. But, critically, one of her more recent collaborators shares
with us a remarkable piece of fresh information regarding her current activities.
“I think there’s always a chance of new music,” they reveal. “She was writing
a few months ago...”

BOTH SIDES, NOW

Clouds, 1969

I PHILIPSELWAY,

RAD IO H E AD : I think if you’ve
got an interest in songwriting,
Joni’s one of the best reference
points and guides in that respect.
I You can’t go far wrong, can you?
My favourite, because it happened twice, is
“Both Sides, Now”. It was on Clouds originally,
and then it was the closing
track on [2000’s] Both Sides
Now. The first was in her
acoustic phase, you know,

Clouds and Ladies Of The
Canyon and Blue, and
it’s such a strong song
performed with just vocal
and acoustic guitar. If a song
can stand up in that way, and
still have that power behind
it, when there are no tricks to
hide behind there...
it either stands up
in its own right at
that point, or it
sounds insipid. To
me, on that version
on Clouds, it
sounds amazing,
it’s the perfect
culmination to
that record.

And then Joni
returned to the
song again when

A

MIKE HERON, THE

INCREDIBLE STRING
BAND: The first time I heard
“Morning Morgantown” was up in
T Scotland on late-night radio. I was

fascinated. We’d actually met her
through Joe Boyd. Joe had been involved with
Dylan’s appearance at the Newport Folk Festival.
He had a long connection with those people.
When we recorded The 5,000 Spirits Or The
Layers Of The Onion, he sent a copy of the album
to the Newport committee. They were putting on
a festival of new names on the block. They had
Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. They booked
us for it, too. That was November, ’67. So when we
met her, she hadn’t yet made her first album. We
sat around, me and Robin [Williamson] and Joni,
and we swapped songs. She sang a few of her
songs, and we sang a few of ours. She said she
really liked what we were doing. I was flattered!
Robin and I were into open-tunings, so we were
taken as much by her guitar-playing as her

beautiful voice. I followed
her career since. Hejira was
her stand-out album, really.

I was listening to some songs
earlier, and her piano-
playing is remarkable. I don’t
know if anyone else was
doing that kind of piano
playing at the time. It’s not
really Carole King; but it’s
not too jazzy at that point.
Listen to Ladies Of The
Canyon. Songs like “Rainy
Night House”, for instance,

I think she set the template for
that kind of piano-playing.

Outside the
Revolution
club, London,
September 1968

3 WILLY

Ladies Of The Canyon,

1970

GRAHAM

NASH “Willy”,
to this day,
breaks my heart
when I hear it.

But her artistry is

With David Crosby in
Mama Cass' garden,
Februaryl968

such that she takes a personal situation and
turns it into a world situation. The relationship
she’s talking about can apply to anyone who’s
listening. That’s the art of writing a great song,
taking a simple thing and making astounding
music from it. There are so many great songs for a
start. I really believe that in a hundred years from
now, when people look back on the ’60s, the
great writers will be Bob Dylan, John and Paul,
and Joni. I like “Amelia”, I think it speaks directly
to your heart, and there is not much in the way of
production. She concentrates on the lyrics and
the melodies of her music and she wants to find
the shortest path from your brain to your heart.
She consistently does that. If you listen to “For
The Roses”, for instance... my God! Listen to “A
Case Of You”: holy shit, it goes straight to your
heart! I love “River” on Blue, too. She influenced
me, as well. There’s a couple of songs I’ve written
in tunings that I learned from Joni, particularly
“Lady Of The Island”. I got tunings from Crosby,
too, because he’s a maniac that way. Hey, you
know it’s her birthday today? I’ve been sending
her flowers on her birthday ever since the day we
parted. Let’s wish Joni a happy birthday today.

RAINY NIGHT HOUSE

I Ladies Of The Canyon, 1970

JOHN GRANT Choosingmy
favourite song is an easy one for
me - on “Rainy Night House”, I
just felt completely understood.

I feel like she is very special, to
understate the issue greatly. The
combination of the songwriting craft and the
level of vocal ability mixed with virtuosity on the
guitar, and the choices of sounds and backing
vocals and everything, all the production, is

overwhelming. I was working in a record shop in
Denver, I think, when I was introduced to her. I
didn’t think it was for me and I didn’t get into her
until much later. I think the first record I heard of
hers was Blue , in California. I had a boss at the
record store and he told me I needed to get Blue
and Court And Spark. I was trying to get my own
band going at the time and I wanted to be like
Radiohead. Later, when I left Texas and moved to
New York, and was working on my first solo
record, Tim Smith, the former singer of Midlake,
gave me a bunch of Joni Mitchell albums. The
first one he gave me was Ladies Of The Canyon

“‘Willy’, to this
day, breaks
my heart when
I hear it...”

GRAHAM NASH

and I took that back and listened to it while
walking around Brooklyn, and on the subway,
and just fell deeply, deeply in love with her.

WOODSTOCK

Ladies Of The Canyon, 1970

HENRY DILTZ,

PHOTOG R APH ER: I first met
Joni at Mama Cass’ house, when
she had a picnic for Eric Clapton.
He’d come to town with Cream
and didn’t know anybody, so she

invited him to meet some friends. One of them
was David Crosby and he brought this new girl
with him he’d found in Florida and flown to LA
to record her first record. We were all sitting out
under the trees and Joni sat there and played the
whole album. Eric was spellbound. He was
staring at her fingers, transfixed by her tunings.

I would see Joni around at friends’ houses for
dinner, or The Troubadour. One day, we went
round her house down the hill from me on
Lookout Mountain Avenue, she was leaning
out of the window, with her elbows on the sill,
relaxed, talking to my partner, Gary Burden,
which allowed me to shoot about 50 pictures of
her over 10 minutes or so. But “Woodstock” is a
special song to me, partly because I was Michael
Lang’s photographer at Woodstock. In all, I
spent two and a half weeks at Woodstock,
photographing the building of the stage onwards
to the festival itself. Joni couldn’t make it, of
course, and was stuck in her hotel room. So she
wrote the song; this idyllic metaphor for the
concert rather than the reality.

5 THE CIRCLE GAME

Ladies Of The Canyon, 1970

LI N DA PE RH ACS: So many
folk singers were sticking with a
pattern from the past, and men
had more opportunity at that time
to get contracts than women - we
forget this. So when Joni Mitchell
came aboard she broke all those rules. One thing
that opened the door for me was that Joni was
doing so well on Warners that Universal wanted
somebody in that kind of position on their label.
So do I owe her a thank you? We all owe her a
thank you! ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 33

© HENRY DILTZ/CORBIS; PIETER M VAN HATTEM; ANGUS STEWART

GEMS/REDFERNS; SARA PADGETT; ANDY WILLSHER

Celebration at Big Sur,
1969: (l-r)Graham Nash,
Joni Mitchell, John
Sebastian, Stephen
Stillsand Joan Baez

© There was Joan Baez, Judy Collins and a few
others, but they were following more traditional
lines. Joni just came right out front and said, “I’m
gonna do it my way.” She was so doggone good
that you couldn’t argue with her. I love
everything she does. I love the early albums,
because those were the ones I was first familiar
with and first struck by. Songs like “The Circle
Game”. People who create are out there to open
new avenues, and Joni Mitchell is definitely one
of the strongest we had last century. I never met
her -1 was in Topanga Canyon, and she was
more in her community of people in Laurel
Canyon, a lovely little haven but very close to the
city. Not everybody may agree, but I never feel a
personality that strong doing something so well
is a first-timer at it, there’s a history as a soul.

CAREY

Blue, 1971

MATTHEW E WHITE:

“Carey” is like a journey. It’s so
personal, so intimate, so free, so
independent - and very cleverly
produced. There’s this really
unique way that ’70s guys produce
records, where there doesn’t seem like a lot of
production going on, there doesn’t seem like
there’s a lot of decisions being made, and it’s
because they were so good at making records.

But Joni is such an incredible singer - no-one can
sing like that, you can try but you can’t. “Carey”
has such a cool tempo. It’s kind of an ‘up’ song
when so much of that record is a ‘down’. I just feel
like it just captured a moment of her life that was
so fresh, and so fun. It’s funny, because Blue is so
stereotypical - it’s a famous album or whatever,
but it’s famous for a reason. When I was on tour
last, all I listened to were Blue and Kendrick
Lamar’s record Good Kid, Maad City. I liked
listening to them back to back. They represent
complete opposites on the musical spectrum in
a lot of ways, but they’re both so beautiful and
well-made and well-crafted. But “Carey”, I
probably play this one throughout my house
and in my car more than anyone else. It’s
really groovy and minimal in a lot of cool ways.

It gives you so much with so little.

8 BLUE

I Blue,1971

VASHTI BUNYANrThefirst

time I heard Joni play, I recall a
borrowed cottage in the Lake
District - winter 1968. The room
with the TV in it had no heating.
Wrapped in coat, jumpers and
scarves, I watched a speckly black and white
image of a young woman at a piano - playing a

song that made me forget being cold. I
was overcome with admiration for her being able
to play and sing alone in front of an audience. I
don’t remember the song -1 only know it was as
heartbreakingly beautiful as she was and that I
have carried that image with me always, like an
old photograph. And so now I choose a piano-led
song of hers from 1970 - which was probably
when I next heard her. “Blue”... how well it
conveys to me an era - and an LA canyon culture
- one that I didn’t ever know but which I feel I
can hear so clear through the words of this song.
She moved on into jazzy styles I had less feeling
for at the time, which only goes to underline the
courage with which she left her - in her label’s
opinion - more commercial songs behind. She
never gave up doing what she wanted to do. But
when I hear her voice - from whichever decade -
it is with an immediate recognition. Many may
try to imitate her but what is the point? It seems
to me that to try to sound like someone else is no
real compliment but a waste of a musical talent

that could be going its own way. Own way - that
would be much more like her.

9 CALIFORNIA

Blue, 1971

LEE RANALDO, SONIC

YO U Joni managed through

her personal experiences to
embody the pulse of the times in
so many ways. “California” is one
of those songs which I always
come back to. She’s not quite wearing the pearls
and perms that would come with the Court And
Spark era, but it’s certainly got this slightly jet-set
vibe - there’s a verse set in Paris, one on the
Greek Islands, and one in Spain. But deep within
all this travelling is this unsettling sadness about
the war and the fact that on those fronts nothing
is really changing - she’s travelling around the
world, but the war is the thing that’s on her
mind, and going back to her adopted home in
California. There’s something about the lyrics to
this one - it sends chills up me. It’s not saying
anything very directly, but it says so much in
such economical means.

When Sonic Youth was working on Daydream
Nation , I wrote “Hey Joni”. It stemmed from an
odd comment that Thurston [Moore] made - he
mentioned “Hey Joe” while we were working on
the song, and it gave me the inspiration to flip it
around. Although the song wasn’t really about
her, I always thought by putting her name in the
title I was professing my deep love for her music.

I don’t think she was a touchstone for the
group, tuning-wise, but definitely something
about those rich modal tunings she was using
left a big impression on me. Back then, it was
really hard to sit down and figure out what her
tunings were - now you can look on the internet.
So what Joni was doing was very mysterious,
it’s hard to figure out. I wonder if there are any
Sonic Youth tunings that actually overlap
with Joni’s?

10

F A

RIVER

Blue, 1971

, LINDA THOMPSON:This

is a beautiful, dark song, with
an amazing lyric and melody. I
particularly love that minor-key
“Jingle Bells” bit at the top and
bottom of the song. That lyric,

“7 wish I had a river I could skate away on ...”

Who says that? People often use rivers in a lyric,
and water in general, for washing them clean,
drowning in and even walking on. But skating
away on... It’s a most evocative picture.

I remember exactly where I was when I heard
that song and the record Blue. I was living at the
Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, with my
darling friend Joe Boyd. He was head of film
music for Warner Brothers, then. He came home
once with a test pressing of Blue. I remember
being aghast with admiration and envy.

I met Joni once. Around Blue , she was managed
by Peter Asher, and I worked for Peter for a while.
She was with James Taylor at the time, and he
often came by the office. She came once with one
of her paintings, and a sweater she had knitted,
and asked me to give them to James. Next time he
came by, I gave them to him and relayed Joni’s
message. I guess they were on the rocks, ©

34 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

“Joni managed
through personal
experiences to
embody the pulse
of the times”

LEE RANALDD

JIM McCRARY/REDFERNS; JESSICA DASCHNER; STEVE GULLICK; ANNE-MARIE BRISCOMBE

MITCHELL

©because he told me he didn’t want them. I’m
upset to this day, that I didn’t take both items
home. They probably got thrown away!

n A CASE OF YOU

I Blue, 1971

JIMMY V I saw Joni the

first time at The Troubadour in
1967. She looked like an angel and
out of her mouth came cinema
verite: real life, real pain, real
suffering and sometimes joy and
excitement. She found this voice to reveal things
that were not previously thought of as fitting,
proper or even interesting subjects for songs.
That got me thinking about my own songwriting.
I was privileged to be round her a lot and heard
many songs before they were finished. I heard
the whole of the For The Roses album when I was
staying in London making my Land's End album
and she spent time with me. I had the chance
to look over her shoulder and witness her
methodology. She would take out her big Martin
guitar and start playing these wildly interesting
chords. The form of the song was constantly
changing, she’d take out her notebook and have
multiple versions completely written out. There
was a tremendous amount of preparation. I love
“A Case Of You”. It’s a revelation. I wish I could
have written the lyrics to that song. There’s
10,000 ways to tell somebody you love them and
that song is one of them. The metaphor is perfect
and it has a lovely air and a beautiful melody.
That’s my kind of stuff. She’s an interesting
combination of world-weary and totally
innocent. I loved her and love her still.

Jimmy Webb is touring the UK in April
Visit www.jimmywebb.com/shows

Recording with
James Taylor for
Carole King’s
Tapestry, 1971

1 n URGE FOR GOING

LAi B-side of “You Turn Me On, I’m
A Radio”, 1972

MARK LANEGAN: “Urge
I For Going” has got that kind of
wistful, sad thing that I’m always
drawn to. It’s so devastatingly
I great, and it’s one of my favourite
I songs. It was one of those things

I heard about through other people or read
about. I remember seeing her in Creem
magazine in the ’70s, but I didn’t actually get
to see her in concert until, I think, the late ’90s,
so it took many, many years between when
I first heard and became a fan and actually
saw her perform. And it was a good one, too.
She was on tour with Bob Dylan and Van
Morrison. What I remember most about
her set was how very

JONI MITCHELL
YOU TORN ME ON,
I’M A RADIO

URGE FOR GOING

flat with a guy who was kind of involved in the
underground, and the morning after she arrived
we were all woken up by the Flying Squad. Joni
was pushed up against a wall, frisked and
threatened by the British bobbies in plain
clothes. Anyway, I introduced her to Essex
Music, and while she was here, The Incredible
String Band were playing at the Speakeasy.

She came and did a short set at the beginning
of their show, and blew everybody away.

Then she went back to America, and the
rest is history. I guess my favourite song is
“Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire”. The lyrics look
like they’re about heroin. That was a period
where there was an awful lot of drugs in Laurel
Canyon. There’s lines like, “Hollow gray fire
escape thief/Looking for sweet fire, shadow of
lady release ”. But one of the most amazing lines,
it’s so brilliant, is “Do you want to contact
somebody first?/Leave someone a letter/You
can come now, or you can come later". It’s so
bureaucratic, it’s almost like signing you into the

prison after you’ve
been arrested, you
know? She’s playing
guitar with James
Burton on that track.
There’s this weird
swing, it’s a really
complex rhythm
track. And the
use of the saxophone
foreshadows
things that she
got into later on,
doing much
more musically
complex material.

"I A FOR THE ROSES

11 For The Roses, 1972

JEAN GRAND-MAITRE

(ARTISTIC DIRECTOR,

ALBERTA BALLET): When
we came together to talk about the
ballet, The Fiddle And The Drum, it
was during the Iraq invasion and
she was really pissed off about it, and about
Earth’s ecological destruction. So a lot of the
songs we selected were dark, but “For The Roses”
is a much more poetic song. The orchestral
version in the ballet is deeply melancholic. It’s
about the plight of the artist. When we invited
her to create a ballet, we thought it was a long
shot, but I didn’t know that she loves dance.

I think she enjoyed it because it made her do
something new, and that’s what she’s always
wanted. I call her the Stanley Kubrick of music,
because she’s made a masterpiece in every genre,
just like he did. I was at her birthday party in
LA last year, and she’s got more energy than
ever. Her mind never stops, it’s a locomotive of
thinking and feeling. She questions herself,
and doubts herself, and criticises herself.

I think there’s always a chance of new music.

She was writing a few months ago - but there
was the event at the Hammer Museum in LA,
so I think she put that on hold to finish the Love
Has Many Faces boxset. The ideas are always
there. As a Canadian, I can say she’s one of the
most important artists that our country has
overproduced.

charming she was onstage -
and really funny. Yeah, man.
That was some tour...

*2

i Q COLD BLUE
1*3 STEELAND
SWEET FIRE

For The Roses, 1972

I JOE BOYD:

We met at the
I Newport Folk
I Festival in ’67.

She and The Incredible String
Band were both on the bill on the
Sunday afternoon. There was an evening of just
drinking and smoking dope and sitting under
a tree in the balmy Rhode Island summer and
listening to Joni and Mike [Heron] and Robin
[Williamson] swap songs for about three hours.
She didn’t have a record deal, but George
Hamilton IV had a hit with “Urge For Going”. She
wanted to sort out a European publishing deal,
so she came to London to stay. I was sharing a

J

"I q HELP ME

-L L-/I Court And Spark, 1974

I Mike Mills, REM As with most
| people, your favourite songs are
the ones which were played while
things were happening in your
life, and this came around at an
I interesting period in my life. “Help
Me” was a song that always seemed magical and
beautiful, and it showed what you could do that
was non-traditional and yet very melodic and
effective. When I heard this it must have been
’74, so I would have been 15 or 16 -1 was just
discovering heartache, so the song made a lot of
sense to me! Some of Court And Sparkwas kinda
baroque, and that’s what I enjoyed, the songs
could be non-traditional but melodic, catchy and
hummable. I know more about her singles than I
do about her deeper tracks, but this was one song
which impressed me with how you could have a
radio hit with something which was complicated
- complicated arrangements, songs and unusual
melodies, and yet they were able to be big hits
on the radio. She, like REM, I think, didn’t care
about having hits. She made the songs she
wanted to make and if radio was going to move in
her direction then I think she was fine with that,
but I don’t think she was out for hit singles.

A f. SAME SITUATION

XO Court And Spark, 1974

I LAURA MARLING:My dad

gave me Court And Spark when
I was 11 or 12, along with a few
others. He really liked this song,
apart from anything because the
L melodies were so strange. He
bought me a guitar and I remember sitting

down in a room with him trying to learn a few
songs, one of which was “Same Situation”. The
record had such an important effect on me. It’s
sort of a concept album in that it has a thread that
follows all the way through and all of the songs
connect into one, which is pretty rad for that era.

I don’t know what it is about that song, it hit me
the most. It’s funny, I feel that Joni Mitchell
resonates in a special way with women; not
exclusively, of course, but that song is so
perceptive in the way it articulates specific
thoughts and feelings.

“She looked like an
angel and out other
mouth came real
life, real pain...”

JIMMY WEBB

r )/

FREE MAN IN PARIS

Court And Spark, 1974

FATHER JOHN MISTY:Ihave

a really distinct memory of being
in high school, driving around late
at night around Christmas, and
the modern rock station played
“River”. That knocked me off my
ass. Then, when I was about 20 ,1 moved to
Seattle and started listening to Blue incessantly.
But “Free Man In Paris”, I was with someone for
three years who managed the band [Fleet Foxes ].
We would listen to that song around the house
and she would sing it. It was so specific, like it
was tailor-made for this person that I loved at
this point in my life. I was watching her life get
overtaken by the work. So on some level, I relate
to the song. You start out as a songwriter and
then all of a sudden you feel like you’re running a
small business. You have employees and you’ve
got the merchandise and people are asking you
about budgets. So there’s something about that
song’s portrayal of the black hole that a career in
music can become. The irony is, you get into this
thing for freedom and creative expression, live
this lofty, spiritual existence, but before you
know it, you’re filling out Excel spreadsheets.

But Joni is the real deal, and “Free Man In Paris”
is a very special song.

BIGYELLOWTAXI

Miles Of Aisles, 1974

MAX BENNETT, BASSIST,
LA EXPRESS: The band had

just started. We were working at
the Baked Potato, the jazz club,
and she came in. She went crazy
for the band and asked if we would
like to play on a couple of songs on her upcoming
album. That was Court And Spark. Then we ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 37

TS/KEYSTONE USA/REX

With Tom Scott,
Victor Feldman and
Robben Ford, at the
New Victoria Theatre,
London, April 20,1974

© went on tour with her. We recorded Miles Of
Aisles at the Universal Amphitheatre. It was
open air, and chilly at night, so we were onstage
freezing every night for a week while they were
recording us. The version of “Big Yellow Taxi”
from Miles Of Aisles was fun to play live; we just
kept adding little things to it while we were on
the road. Things are never the same once you do
the album and then you go on the road, you alter
songs as you go along, and that tune became a lot
of fun to play. Being in the studio with Joni was
very different to being onstage. The studio is
pretty much business; friendly business, though,
because she respected the band. We were all
professional jazz musicians and because she
would skip beats or whatever she did to make a
song unique, that never bothered us. She said
once, the guys in CSNY couldn’t get it because
they were a different type of musician. When we
were on the road, we hung out a lot together.
Because we all liked to bowl, her manager would
go to a bowling alley in the city where we were
playing and ask them to keep it open so we could
go bowling after the concert. Of all the people
I’ve gone on the road with - Ella Fitzgerald,
Peggy Lee - she was definitely the best.

SINGCF. 4 ^ JUME

'JONIMnCHB

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A Q THE JUNGLE LINE

X-y The Hissing Of Summer Lawns,

AL STEWART: I went to see
the first concert she ever gave in
England, a little showcase put on
by the record company. There
were about 20 people there. Then,
a little later, I played the Royal
Festival Hall. Fairport Convention were the
headliners and Joni was the special guest; that
would have been 1968. About 10 years later, I
played at a benefit concert for an American
charity called Bread & Roses run by Mimi Farina,
Joan Baez’s sister. Joni was on that bill, too, so
our paths keep crossing. I think a lot of her style
comes from those guitar tunings; because she
had an illness in her youth, she had to adapt to
play the guitar in her own style. Everyone around
the folk scene played D-A-D-G-A-D, but not Joni.
“Jungle Line”, though, is quite a departure. It’s a
very odd chord construction; very unorthodox. I
don’t even think there’s any rhythm guitar on it.

“Rousseau walks on trumpetpaths/Safaris to the

1975

heart of all that jazz ...” She is very literate. She
uses words that pretty much no-one else would,
but she uses them more in an emotional way
than an intellectual way. So I’m always
interested in what she does with the language,
to conjure up a fresh take on something which
otherwise would be quite run of the mill.

OA DON’T INTERRUPT
ZU THE SORROW

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, 1975

I ROBBEN FORD,

GUITARIST, LA EXPRESS: In

, 1974 ,1 got a phone call from Tom
Scott inviting me to tour with Joni
and the LA Express. We went on
the road for the most part of nine
months all over the US. But my first experience
working with her in the studio was on The
Hissing Of Summer Lawns. I was 22 and still
very inexperienced in the studio. I remember,
she would ask you to do things that weren’t
necessarily your instincts. For instance, on “In
France They Kiss On Main Street”, she said, “I’d
like you to plug the electric guitar into a fuzz
tone, into the console.” To me, that was the most
foreign request I could have imagined. But it

turned out different and unique. She was always
looking for something different, and she was
always very gentle about the way she suggested
things, there was never any attitude, it was
always “Why don’t we just try it?” I remember
visiting her later in the studio when she was
recording Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. She was
playing some synthesised keyboard overdubs on
one of the songs, and she was sitting in a chair
that was quite high up off the ground and
underneath her legs were swinging in the air!

She was like a little girl with crayons, she just
had that freedom. I love “Don’t Interrupt The
Sorrow”, though. It’s got this very slinky feel and
this groove that just keeps on going. I play Dobro
guitar on it, and Larry Carlton is playing this very
flowy electric guitar that comes in and out. It’s a
great, unusual piece of music. I’m very proud to
have been on it.

9-1 COYOTE

Zu J. Hejira, 1976

SIMON NICOL, FAIRPORT
CONVENTION I can never
get tired of “Coyote”. There’s a
particularly good live version,
from the Greek Theatre in 1979.

It has her stamp; that unusual
degree of storytelling going on during that
period, and she tells the story in quite a tongue¬
twisting way, really. The delivery is more
energetic than reflective. It sounds like she’s
having a ball, especially when she’s with Jaco
and the others in the band from that period. I met
her a couple of times. She was stepping out with
Joe Boyd when he first signed us. This was 1967
or ’68, and she found herself in London to talk
publishing with somebody and she was staying
with Joe for a week or so. He invited us round to
meet her one afternoon. I was 16 or 17 and she
was this sophisticated super hippy, with this
North American aura about her. I recall she had a
very smart Martin D28 guitar. We sat in the room
and she sang about half a dozen songs. That’s
where we got “Eastern Rain” and “Chelsea
Morning” and the other songs of hers that are on
our early albums. Then the next time I saw her
was 1970 or ’71. She’d parted company with Joe
by then, but somehow we ended up in her house
in Laurel Canyon in the afternoon, having tea.

It wasn’t going to be Builders: it was Earl Grey
drunk in little Chinese tea cups, the ones without
handles. We sat on the deck in her lovely garden,
overlooking the canyon. That was jolly.

HEJIRA

Hejira, 1976

JONATHAN WILSON:

I was a young jazz fanatic
when I heard the Mingus album
and the recordings she’d made
with Jaco Pistorius. Yet when I
listen back to “Hejira”, the way
she melts jazz into her thing seems so effortless.
Her sensibilities and her ethereal qualities
speak to me, the harmonic depth and chords
that she achieved being self-taught is staggering.
But on “Hejira”, the way she cross-polinates
between styles is very affecting. I always think
about when I was in my studio with David

38 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

MITCHELL

At the time of
The Hissing Of
Summer Lawns,
October 17,1975

Crosby, and just the reverence with which
David - or Graham [Nash], Jackson [Browne] or
whoever - talk about her. David told me about
when he first heard her, and how she blew his
mind and he was so excited to bring her back to
town to share this stupendous talent, and he’s
like a proud parent. You know, I ended up at her
70th birthday party. It was completely random.
We were downstairs at this Hollywood club and
upstairs had a VIP space. I thought I’d pop up
and see what was going on. I sneaked my way
up and Joni sitting there. It was her birthday
party. They had a beautiful cake in the shape
of a Martin guitar. I spoke to her briefly and
wished her a happy birthday.

90 SONG FOR SHARON

Hejira, 1976

JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR: Whenllistento
Hejira, I don’t often notice the music that much.
The jazz humidity, Mitchell’s remorseless
journey away from folk and the expectations of
her fans; these details seem at best incidental,
at times irrelevant. What I hear, perhaps more
than any other record I own, are the words,
great measured cascades of them, and the way
Joni Mitchell delivers them as a stream of
consciousness that never loses its meticulous
poetic poise.

Hejira works best as a single piece, a
bittersweet travelogue of sorts. But its
pleasures are most satisfyingly exemplified

Such is the focus on the lyrics, that the
rhythm seems to be set by her ruminations,
line byline.

“Song For Sharon” is about the conflicting
attractions of rootless freedom and romance,
about the divergent paths of Mitchell and
a friend from childhood, about the consolations
that music, at least occasionally, can offer.

Ideas and stories rear up and evaporate -
a trip to Staten Island to buy a mandolin is
memorably hijacked by “the long white dress of
love on a storefront mannequin” - but while
nothing is resolved, I can think of few songs
that present more effectively the contradictory
impulses of a great artist. One moment,

Mitchell is keen to embrace “a wide wide
world of noble causes/And lovely landscapes
to discover” The next, she’s frankly
admitting, “All I really want to do right now/

Is find another lover”

And always, unerringly, she has the precise
words for imprecise emotions. After a friend
kills herself, and her friends call up, “all

emotions and

Mttcheil Hejira

“She plays by ear...

she makes up
colours to explain
what she’s feeling”

ROGER McGUINN

-iC/

by “Song For Sharon”, where bassist Max
Bennett (not, you’ll note, Jaco Pastorius here)
and drummer John Guerin empathetically track
Mitchell’s voice and guitar for the best part of
nine minutes.

abstractions ”
Mitchell nails the
vagaries of the
human condition
with, I think,
one of my favourite
couplets in any
song. “It seems
we all live so close
to that line” she sings,
as if the perfect words
just materialised in
her head, “And so far
from satisfaction...”

DREAMLAND

Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter,

1977

Av

k\

I ROGER McGUINN: I covered
“Dreamland” on my Cardiff Rose
album. I was riding on the tourbus
with Joni on the Rolling Thunder
Revue. Sitting next to her, she had
1 a little composition book and
she was filling it up with new songs, and I was
getting ready to record Cardiff Rose. I didn’t have
enough songs to complete it, so I turned to Joni
and asked her if she had any spare. She said,
“Well, McGuinn, I got this one song you might
be able to use, but there’s a line in it I’m not sure
about.” I said, “Yeah, what’s that?” She said,

“I wrapped a flag around me like a Dorothy
Lamour sarong.. .” I said, “Well... I can work with
that!” [laughs] So I changed it to “ErrolFlynn
sarong”. She must have had 25 or 30 songs in
there, and then she lost the book! I don’t know if
she ever recovered it, somehow it slipped out of
her possession. I guess she remembered some of
them, but I recall she was quite devastated at
losing it. On my version, I was trying to emulate
some of Joni’s phrasing, on the vocals. And I
remember she came to the studio, and she said,
“Well, it sounds pretty good but you need to work
on the vocal,” and I said “Well, no no, that’s the
way I wanted it.” I don’t think she appreciated my
version. It was so different from hers. Joni’s not ©

- GutAtA

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 39

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; GINNY WINN/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; CHRIS GRECO

MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES; MINCHIN; HARRY BORDEN

MY SECRET PLACE

\J \ Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm, 1988

NICK MASON: This came from
the period when she was married
to Larry Klein. I’ve always loved
the sound of her voice, right from
when we listened to her first
album, and she’s one of those
artists where I have virtually all her albums and
so it’s very hard to find a single song or moment
that encapsulates it all. I would never get tired of
hearing a song like “Chelsea Morning” or “Big
Yellow Taxi” for instance, but I love some of the
work she’s done on Shine just as much as any on
her earlier albums. Part of what I love about her
music is how she’s changed, that’s the interesting
thing. I love the things that have remained
constant - the quality of the singing, the

© really a technician of music. She plays by ear,
she makes up her own theory, and makes up
colours and things to explain what she’s feeling,
what she’s trying to express with her music. I
remember being at Leonard Cohen’s house for
dinner with her, and she and Leonard were
talking about this kind of language that they’d
developed, about music in terms of colours,
which was a very interesting conversation.

IbkVJg

*■) IT CHINESE CAFE /

ZD UNCHAINED MELODY

Wild Things Run Fast, 1982

LARRY KLEIN, BASSrlwas

called to play on some sessions
that ended up becoming Wild
Things Run Fast . I was 25, and she
was unlike any woman that I have
ever been around or worked with.
I was completely impressed with her. In the
studio, she very open and adventurous and
curious and completely game for trying new
ways of approaching music. We became an
item and she wrote “Chinese Cafe/Unchained
Melody” somewhat early on in our relationship.
She was travelling across Canada by car, from
Calgary to Saskatoon, a trip we did several times
ourselves together, but this particular time she
was travelling by herself. There is something in
the simplicity of the song and its sentiment that
is extraordinarily touching to me. It has this
wistful quality to it, of someone looking out at
the world changing. The hook of the chorus is,

“Nothing lasts for long". She’s using that line
in relation to human experience but also the
ecology of the planet. Then she interlocks it with
“Unchained Melody”, and the way in which she
undulates between her new poem and snatches
of that old song, is amazing to me. When we
worked on that together, it had this incredible
power to make me cry, or at least just make
emotions well up inside of me. To this day, when
I listen to the recording that we made of it, it has
the same quality for me. There’s just something,
so evocative about it and sad. But sad in a

bittersweet way, you know, in the way that
melancholy is kind of sweet.

40 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

interpretation of the songs - but the music itself
has also become more sophisticated, especially
after she began to work with Larry Klein. He
brought a real jazz influence to her music that I
loved. You can hear that change on the two
versions of “Both Sides, Now” [from Clouds and
Both Sides Now] . If I had to pick one of the songs
from the albums he produced, it would be “My
Secret Place” from Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm
because she’s doing duets with various guest
artists and that one was with Peter Gabriel, so it’s
a two-for-one as I’m such a fan of Peter, too. Their
voices just combined perfectly.

Ifell

r )»7| COME IN FROM
Z / THE COLD

Night Ride Home, 1991

MICHAEL BONNER, ASSOCIATE

EDITOR: “The ’80s were very hard on me,”
Mitchell confessed to Texas radio station KGSR-
FM in 1998. “Everybody that could, robbed me in
the greedy ’80s.” Indeed, Night Ride Home - her
first album in the ’90s - marked a significant
return for Mitchell. The songs privileged her old
jazz guitar phrasings, discretely accompanied
by co-producer Larry Klein’s sensitive bass
playing. A highlight among several graceful
reminiscences that feature on the album, “Come
In From The Cold” finds Mitchell chronicling a
narrator’s sadness - in relationships, youthful
ambitions that never came to fruition, the
failings of her generation, the ageing process.

Its layers of nostalgic ruminations create a
pervasive sense of loneliness and isolation:

“7 am not some commission/Like a statue in
a park/I am flesh and blood and vision/I am
howling in the dark”.

iiMf

9 OIMAN FROM MARS

1 Grace Of My Heart OST, 1996/
Tanning The Tiger, 1998

STEPHEN TROUSSE, UNCUT
CONTRIBUTOR: When ex-husband Larry
Klein approached Joni in 1995 to contribute a
song (maybe something in the vein of “For The
Roses”?) to the soundtrack he was curating for
Allison Anders’ Brill Building movie a clef
Grace Of My Heart, she turned him down flat.
What was she - some kind of short-order hack?
She reconsidered, so the story goes, when her
favourite cat, Nietzsche, went missing for over
a fortnight and the grief hurt her into writing a
song that, purely coincidentally, was perfect for
the film (where it was sung by Kristen Vigard). As
alibis go, it’s up there with Blood On The Tracks
being about Chekhov. When she finally released
“Man From Mars” herself on 1998’s Taming The
Tiger, the song was comfortably declawed and
domesticated, arranged on a plump bed of new
age synth and fretless bass. But check out the
original piano version with Joni’s demo vocal,
accidentally released on first pressings of the
soundtrack album and swiftly deleted to be
replaced by the cast recording, but now easily
findable on YouTube, for one of the rawest
reckonings of loss (“There is no center to my
life now/No grace in my heart”) in the entire
Mitchell songbook.

MITCHELL

9Q A CASE OF YOU

Zl2/ Both Sides Now, 2000

I GUY GARVEY, ELBOW: This
is the orchestral version of “A Case
Of You” from Both Sides Now. The
song itself is very nostalgic, she
was talking about past love, and
I it’s fairly melancholy. To hear her
sing it as an old lady with a smoky old vocal and
a big lush orchestra behind her, it’s just really
beautiful. The first time you hear it is unbeatable,
especially if you don’t know what you’re listening
to, which was the case when I heard it. My sister
Becky has always made me compilations,
especially when the band is going on tour. Becky
said, “I want to be with you when you hear the
first track on this compilation.” She was working
at Granada TV, and I went to meet her in the
canteen. There was a chap from Coronation Street
at the next table, I can’t remember his name. I
just remember thinking, T wish he’d shut up, I
can’t hear this.’ I recognised the chords when the
strings picked up and when her voice came in
with its age and its richness and its experience
and its longing and its heartbreak, there I am,
sat blubbing next to whatever his name from
Coronation Street. It’s just really beautiful. You
can hear her influence in “Starlings” or “The
Bones In You”. Her phrasing and her lines are
organic, and it twists and it dives and it jumps
around, and that’s why it’s so beautiful. It’s as
natural as birds in the sky.

admired. She was part of that group effecting
social change, attempting to embrace and
demonstrate an awareness of the circumstances
of America through music. I think that was a
magnificent time, and all power to those people
that did that. I wouldn’t say I aspired to it myself.
I’m a Black Country boy.

“She is
probably the
best writer
of us all”

DAVID CROSBY salutes
the genius of Joni

I DISCOVERED JONI in a
club [The Gaslight South,
Coconut Grove] in Florida
in ’67.1 walked in and she
was standing there singing.
It was one of those early
songs like ‘Michael From
Mountains’ or ‘Both Sides,
Now’. I was stunned. She had the voice and
the guitar playing.

She’d already been singing for a while with her
husband, Chuck Mitchell, and then by herself
after she got smart and realised that she was
good on her own. It was a hell of an experience
to walk in and run into somebody who was
writing songs at that level.

I produced her first album, and left it pretty
simple. If I did her any kind of favour, other than
introducing her to everybody, it was to keep that
record pretty pristine. What folk singers did back
then was a kind of indicated arrangement. We all
learned how to be the whole band on one guitar,
and her arrangements were superb. I was afraid
that people would try to take her stuff and
translate it into a band and lose the magic of
how she played.

Joni had a lot of great qualities, but one of them
has always been that she was a superb musician,
not just a great singer, not just a great songwriter.

I didn’t like the big lush orchestrations of her
stuff as much, because I really love when it’s her
playing the guitar and the dulcimer and her
giving her own swing to it.

I think if you look back on this past 50 years
from, say, 50 years from now, I don’t think
anybody is close to Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan in
significance and songwriting. The two of them
stand out. Now, I think Bob is a fantastic poet,
and I’m a huge believer in Bob Dylan, I’ve
made records out of his songs dozens of times,

I think he’s fantastic - but Joni’s a better
musician. I don’t think there’s any question
about it. She’s certainly a better singer, 10 times
the singer Bob ever was, and as good a poet
in her own way. But it’s apples and oranges,
they approached things completely differently.
If you listen to her poetry, it’s hard to deny man -
I mean, Christ. I’ve been singing ‘Amelia’
lately, and damn, her poetry’s good! There’s
so many songs of hers that are so brilliantly
written. You can’t say which one is the best.
There are 30 or 40 best ones.

At the time when I first met her and brought
her back to California we were going together,
and I don’t know if it lasted a year but it lasted
a long time. It was good, but it was daunting.

I would sing her a song and she’d sing me
three back that were all better than the one
I sang her. Something like that can either
make you feel belittled or it can encourage
you to do better. And what it did with me is
it encouraged me to do better. It made me
write songs like ‘Guinnevere’.

She’s probably the best writer of us all,
and I still think that. I don’t think there’s
any question. I don’t think there’s a singer-
songwriter in the world that hasn’t been
affected by Joni. If you listen to her songs, and
you’re a singer-songwriter you can’t help but
be affected by her. You want to be that good,
we all did. We all do. ©

Interviews by Michael Bonner, TomPinnock
and Peter Watts

We hope you enjoyed our 30 greatest
Joni songs. But did we miss anything out?
What are your favourite Joni songs?

Why not send your Mitchell missives
touncut_feedback@timeinc.com

quality of the lyrics and
combines with her vocal
performance. It’s so
beautiful. Joni had a huge
effect on me, as she did on a
lot of other people. Not so
much as an influence, but as
a really big, strong member
of the fraternity that I really

AMELIA

Travelogue, 2002

ROBERT PLANT: On

Travelogue, that more recent
double album with the orchestra,
there’s a great version of “Amelia”.
I love that orchestral version.

If I ever commissioned anybody
to look at me for 40 years and then write a song
about me, it would be that song, it’s all
encapsulated there. What happened on
Travelogue is she revisited a lot of her old songs,
but the thing is the emotive quality of the voice
has changed - as has mine.

The voice has to change or
you give up, so you have to
keep using it. There’s a lot of
muscle involved, but also a
lot of it is in the mind, gaining
confidence. That helps you
move to a better place. With
“Amelia”, I love also the
drama and the thought in the
orchestration, it’s a beautiful
contrast to the emotive

DAVID WARNER ELLIS/REDFERNS ; TOM SHEEHAN; GREGG DELMAN; ELEANOR STILLS

FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES

All Over

BY THE DAVE CLARK FIVE

How a five-piece from Tottenham briefly became the world’s biggest
band, with the help of an infectious hit that outsold The Beatles. “It
didn’t take long to write,” says Clark. “We were blessed, you know...”

Having a wild weekend... The
Dave Clark Five in an E-Type
Jag, London, 1965 : (l-r) Lenny
Davidson, Rick H uxley, Dave
Clark, Denis Payton, MikeSmith

E STARTED OFF purely for
the fun of it,” explains Dave
Clark today. “Actually, I
played football at a youth
club, and we were asked
to play a Dutch team one
Easter but we didn’t have
any money [to get to Holland ]. It was in the days
of skiffle, so we formed a group to make some
money, and that’s how it all started.”

From such unassuming beginnings, The Dave
Clark Five fashioned their craft long and hard on
the live circuit - with the giant Tottenham Royal
Mecca ballroom their Cavern Club. The band had
solidified around Clark, singing keyboardist Mike
Smith, saxophonist Denis Payton, bassist Rick
Huxley and guitarist Lenny Davidson - along with
Clark, the only surviving member. With their
breakthrough hit, the infectious “Glad All Over”,
they managed to knock The Beatles off the No 1
spot, conquer America at the vanguard of the
British Invasion and, for a short period, become the
biggest band in the world - most of this while the
members held down day jobs in offices or, in
Clark’s case, as a stunt man. “It was a whole new
ballgame when the British Invasion came along,”
recalls Ann Moses, then a young journalist in LA
who was impressed by their hit, and would become
firm friends with the group. “The DC5 were the
first British group that I saw, before The Beatles or
any of the other bands. To me, it was like nothing
I’d ever seen - there was so much energy, they

were just so alive onstage!”

“DC5 were a dancing band,”
confirms the group’s regular
photographer Bruce Fleming.

“It was a band where you just
couldn’t sit, you know. You
were up and jumping, and
these kids were. It was a
different kind of excitement.”

TOMPINNOCK

DAVE CLARK: We passed
the audition for Mecca, and
that got us to the Tottenham
Royal, which was always my
dream. All of a sudden there
were 6,000 people in there
when we played. The police station - which is still
there, opposite where the Royal was - had to
cancel all the police leave. That was quite funny.
The Tottenham Royal was one of the best venues
in London, because it was built like a plane hangar.
It was huge, they had a balcony around the top,
where all the bars were, and the stage revolved.

As it revolved around just before you played, you
heard this amazing noise. It was like being in a
football stadium.

BRUCE FLEMING: The Dave Clark Five were
just coming up, and I went to the Tottenham Royal
with them, and photographed them there. The kids
were getting very enthusiastic! In fact, it was a little
frightening, the way they were carrying on, I’ve

never seen anything like it -
the audience were sort
ofhysterical.

CLARK: After [early single
and cover] “Do You Love Me”
came out in the UK, Brian
Poole & The Tremeloes
covered it three weeks later.
The radio was playing our
version, but the shops sold
their records, as they were
following up their No 1, “Twist
And Shout”. It worked against
us, and it made me say, “Well,
in the future we’re going to do
our own songs.”

FLEMING: It was a very
powerful band. Mike was out front as lead singer,
and he was a terrific rock’n’roll singer, very
underrated in a way. And they had saxophone in
there, as well, which really gave it a lot of push.
Dave was a damn good drummer - very powerful,
very upfront, right in your face.

CLARK: I went to Alexander Palace once, and
saw a big band called The Eric Delaney Band. On
the front of the stage, he had these timpanis. He
came off the drums at the back and played these
timpanis, and it was quite amazing. It was
showmanship. That always stuck in my mind. It
wasn’t very clever, what he was doing, but it was
dynamite, the crowd loved it. That was a big
influence. At a lot of gigs, we used to do some

KEY PLAYERS

Dave Clark
Drummer,
songwriter,
producer

Bruce

Fleming

Photographer

Ann Moses

1 USjournalist,
friend

42 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

DAVE CLARK

instrumentals because it was a long stint, three
and a half hours. We often started with The
Routers’ “Half Time”, and we’d stop, carry on with
just the drums going, with everybody in the band
stamping - all the audience would start to stamp,
and you can imagine what it was like when it got
to 6,000 people. The guy on the lights at the
Tottenham Royal had no lighting board, but I got
him to switch the lights on and off from the mains,
in time with the music. It got amazing reactions,
and that’s how Mike and I got the idea for “Glad
All Over” and “Bits And Pieces”. “Glad All Over”
didn’t take long at all to write. Your best songs are
the ones you seem to do very quickly. It was a great
hook, and a very simple one. How long did it take
to record? An hour, two hours...

ADRIAN KERRIDGE (Engineer): Sessions
were broken into three hours, and we usually
recorded four tracks in each one. We were
recording on four-track in those days. In the
’50s, we didn’t even have that.

Multi-tracks didn’t exist until
’62. And then they weren’t very
large, four-track - so we had to
work as best we could.

CLARK: On a four-track, it
means you can only use three
tracks, and the fourth track you
use to mix and bounce to, to
make your quarter-inch master.

So if you’re going to do any
overdubs, you have to do it at the

same time you’re mixing down to the quarter-inch.
I would have maybe put an extra drum hit on the
chorus. There’s a great guitar lick Lenny played
under that section, too. It was primitive.
Lansdowne was a big Victorian building, with
huge ceilings, and the echo chamber was the stone
stairwell, the stairs, right the way to the top of the
building. And so you got a great sound. But if

“We didn’t even go
professional when we
had the No 1. The
boys were in offices
and I was doing
stunt work”

DAVE CLARK

somebody walked down the stairs
instead of getting in the lift, you
had to re-record it!

KERRIDGE: I always prefer to
record the vocal live. And that’s
the way Sinatra and Crosby did it
in those days. No messing about,
come in the studio, put it down -

because you get a better reaction between the
vocalist and the band. If they then can’t do it, then
of course you separate it and you overdub it. But
overdubbing is not the same as everybody being
live. You get the better reaction from the musicians.

CLARK: We were selling between 120,000 and
180,000 copies a day in the UK. The record ended
up selling over a million and a half to knock The
Beatles off No 1. And the final tally was over
2,500,000. We were semi-professional, so the boys
were still in offices and I was still doing stunt work.
In fact, we were the only band in England where we
actually topped the bill on Sunday Night At The
London Palladium , and we were all still working.
We didn’t even go professional when we had
“Glad All Over” at No 1. It was after that.

ANN MOSES: I was in high school at the time
when “Glad All Over” was released. We all just
loved the record, that’s what caught our attention.

It was Dave pounding on the drums, you wanted
to dance to it, and sing along. It was a great song.

CLARK: I turned The Ed Sullivan Show down
originally, because I didn’t know who he was. But
we went down so well on it, that Sullivan said, “I’m
holding you over in America for next week.” Well,
we were already booked in the UK for that week. He
said, “I thought you’d be pleased, because I’ve told
70,000,000 Americans...” That’s when it hit me...
Wow! 70,000,000 people - that’s crazy! I said,
“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but
we’ve got a gig in England.” And he said, “I’ll buy
it out!” Without thinking, I just said, “Well, I ©

glad ail over

words AHD Hufcc BT 1

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 43

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE

TIMELINE

1957 The band begin as
The Dave Clark Quintet

August 1962 The Dave
Clark Five release their
first single, “Chaquita";
it fails to chart

1963 The DCs win
the Gold Cup
award for best
live band on the
huge Mecca
Ballroom circuit

November 1963

“Glad All Over" is
released - in January
1964, it knocks The
Beatles’ “I Want To
Hold Your Hand" off the

Nol spot in the UK
singles chart
March 8 , 1964 The DCs
appear on America’s
The Ed Sullivan Show
for the first time

© couldn’t stay in New York for a week..So he
said, “Where do you want to go?” On the way in
from the airport, I’d seen these billboards, and
one of them said ‘Montego Bay - island paradise’.

I didn’t know where it was, but I said, “Montego
Bay.” So they flew us all out to Jamaica. We came
back to New York on the Friday, and there were
over 30,000 people at the airport, so they flew us
out by helicopter, and we landed on top of the
Pan Am Building. It was crazy! At the end of the
show, Ed Sullivan said, “I want you to make me a
promise, every time you come to America, you’ll do
my show.” We were back in America eight weeks
later! We had sold out these huge arenas! From
nothing. So we were the first English group to tour
America, and that was in May.

MOSES: It was crazy, the mania for them in the
US. I was volunteering as an usher at Melodyland
Theater in LA. One night I went in to work, I hadn’t
paid attention to what show was on, and lo and
behold, it was a concert with The DC5 .1 watched
their first show and was like, ‘Oh, my God, I have to
meet these guys.’ It was overwhelming, especially
hearing them talk in that divine British accent.

FLEMING: The Beatles and The DC5 were both
very big bands in the States. The DC5 were as big as
The Beatles, if not bigger at one point. When they
got to the height of their fame it was unbelievable.
And exciting, thousands and thousands of fans in
a stadium, it was something else.

MOSES: Their manager let me come backstage
in between shows, and I did an interview with
them for my high-school magazine. By the time
they came back to LA the next time, they played
the Long Beach Arena, a much bigger venue, and
by that time I was visiting them at their hotel,
taking photos, and I went in the limo with them
to their Long Beach performance. As we left
the arena that night, girls were
surrounding the limo, they
were climbing on top, it was a
terrifying experience. It felt like
the roof was going to come in.

Slowly but surely, the driver was
able to inch ahead not hurting
anybody and we got out of there.

FLEMING: I had to escape
several times when I was with
them at concerts or whatever,
we had to escape in a van. And
I think Dave had a fake van that
went out first, with nothing in
it, and then we went out. And
we were in this van, and they
stopped the van, and you could
hear this roaring outside. I
remember Dave saying, “Stay
away from the walls!” Because
the fists were making dents in the
walls of the truck. It was scary, it
really was.

MOSES: Another time the band came back to
town and said, “We wanna go to Disneyland...”

I was working there at the time. Well, Disneyland
had a rule, I think up until the mid-’70s, that no
long hair was permitted, so they literally could not
go in. So I called my boss and he called the head

FACT FILE

Written by: Dave Clark,
MikeSmith

Performers: MikeSmith
(vocals, keyboards), Lenny
Davidson (guitar, vocals), Rick
Huxley (bass, vocals), Denis
Payton (saxophone, vocals),
Dave Clark (drums, vocals)
Produced by: Dave Clark
Engineered by:

Adrian Kerridge
Recorded at: Lansdowne
Studios, London
Released: November 1963
UK/US chart:!; 6

supervisor at Disneyland,
told them, “These are very
nice, British young men,
they dress nicely, and
they only have long hair
as they’re performers,”
and so the supervisor
gave me special
permission and let me
take them to Disneyland.

We had a blast.

FLEMING: It was just
wild, really wild. Even here
back in England when they were
recording, I remember one incident at
Lansdowne Studios, in Holland Park. The
kids heard they were there - how the hell they

found out I don’t know - but they
found out and they broke the
glass front door getting in, just
smashed that. Another night
I got caught - the boys ran
offstage knowing what was
coming, and the audience
literally jumped on the stage. I
was the last one out, the crowd
caught me and pulled a piece of
my hair right out of my head.
Then they strangled me, because
they got my tie, and I had to let
the tie go, and then they tore the
sleeve off my jacket. Mike Smith
came back, and pushed them
back, saved me. I’ve never seen
anything like it.

MOSES: The thing that was so
unique about them was that they
were so grounded. They were a
year or two older than a lot of the
other groups, one or two of them were married,
and Dave - in addition to just being a really nice
person - you could tell he was a consummate
businessman about the whole thing, he wasn’t like
a rock’n’roller who was out to get high on drugs
and have a wild time, they took their work very
seriously. They were fun, they were just so nice and

The documentary Dave Clark Five And Beyond:
Glad All Over is available now on DVD

easygoing. Great

guys.

CLARK: I

owned all our
masters, yeah.
When EMI were
after us, I went to
them and said
we’d pay for it all
so we could be
independent,
though I didn’t know
where we’d find the
money. By pure luck I got
a gig crashing a car as a
stuntman. It’s nothing heroic, the
car’s got rollbars, you’re strapped in, you
go up a ramp and turn over, it’s all choreographed,
it’s piece of cake, really. I got 100 quid a night, it was
a night call. That first 300 quid paid for the first
record. We did it purely to be independent, so if it
failed you don’t have to blame anybody else - it’s
your own choice. If it succeeded, you could control
your own destiny in the sense that creatively we
recorded what we wanted to record, and when.

And it was all fun, we were all mates from school
days, so therefore it was a great relationship. When
I look back at other contemporaries, with all the
stuff that went on, we were blessed, you know.

FLEMING: Dave’s a serious guy, he didn’t mess
about. He was no fool. A lot of managers were
taking advantage of young bands, and more or less
fleecing them. But Dave was too smart for that.

CLARK: The best compliment I had was when
Berry Gordy told me that he used a lot of my licks
on the Motown records, and if you listen to The
Supremes’ “Baby Love”, and a couple of those early
hits, they came out in September ’64, and we’d had
the fastest-selling single in February ’64 in the US.

It was the combination that made it work, it wasn’t
the Dave Clark Five, it was Mike, Denis, Lenny,

Rick and Dave. It’s everybody’s contribution, or
sound, that made it work. It worked as a unit. ©

44 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

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NEW COUNTRY

Between the grit of Americana
and the glitz of the mainstream,
a new breed of country artists
are seizing their moment.

Uncut hears the stories of
Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark
and Angaleena Presley, and
celebrates an exciting time for
country music: "Go out on a limb.
That ’s where the fruit is.. ”

Story: Rob Hughes

HE TEXAN CITY
of Frisco, half an
hour’s drive from
Dallas, is better
known for its
sport than any
musical affiliation.
Baseball, football,
hockey and soccer
tend to dominate
the local headlines, especially since The Dallas
Cowboys announced plans to move there for the
2016 NFL season. But it also happens to be home
to Slate Creek Records, an independent label
that’s quietly nurturing a superior kind of
country music. Founded in 2012 by Jim Burnett,
Slate Creek has a growing reputation for

discovering young talent deemed too leftfield for
the majors. Its tiny roster has included Brandy
Clark and Angaleena Presley, both of whom have
made significant debuts over the last 18 months.
Presley’s American Middle Class , released in
America in October, is already doing swift
business in the country charts, no doubt helped
by her status as one third of big-selling girl
group, Pistol Annies. Admittedly, Clark is a little
further along. Released in 2013 ,12 Stories is a
scintillating record - literate, wise, spare, its
narratives drawn from first-hand experience -
that’s earned her two Grammy nominations
(including Best New Artist, pitted against
major-label acts like Sam Smith and Iggy Azalea).
As with Presley, the secret of Clark’s appeal
is an innate ability to bridge the worlds of

traditional country and modern Americana.

“Lyrical intelligence is the thing that aligns
them to artists we’d associate with Americana,”
observes Bob Harris, presenter of Radio 2’s
flagship country show. “Brandy and Angaleena
are writing highly observational lyrics about
their everyday lives and challenges. Brandy’s
talking about the housewife living next door to
you: the problems she’s having, be it the fella
coming home drunk or not being able to find
work, whatever it is. They’re both specifically
dealing in women’s issues, which is very
important.” Meanwhile, Jim Burnett is keen to
point out that Slate Creek strives for quality over
quantity. “I started the label because I wanted
a home for artists that I feel have something
unique to offer,” he explains. “Labels can be

46 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

MELISSA MADISON FULLER; DAVID McCLISTER;

IOHN SCARPATI; RANDEE ST NICHOLAS; NINO MUNOZ

accused of manufacturing artists but that’s really
just smoke and mirrors with the music-buying
consumer. And I think they can sense that. 12
Stories got a Grammy nomination as she created
a great album and she’s incredibly talented. We
didn’t make Brandy that way, we just helped her
get it out there. The same goes for Angaleena.

For me, country music has always been about
the words and the stories they tell. A return to
the era of classic country is a welcome change.”

Clark herself is the first to admit that it took a
while for her to do what she does best. “I started
out trying to chase what was on country radio
at the time,” she says, referring to her early
experiences as a Music Row songwriter. “But I
only started to have success when I decided to tell
stories that intrigued me, stories that maybe

other people weren’t telling. I write exactly as
I feel, I’m not going to smooth out any edges of
the truth. Some of my songs use composite
characters, but there’s always somebody in there
that I know. I’m deeply rooted in traditional
country, which was always an adult music form.
A lot of people love [prescription drug critique]
‘Take A Little Pill’, for example, but the subject
matter is just too dark for country radio.”

The working practices of Slate Creek are pretty
simple. Crucially, too, they can also be applied to
a burgeoning number of Americana artists, like
Clark and Presley, who’ve begun to breach the
mainstream on their own terms, guided by the
strength of their own conviction rather than the
marketing muscle of the corporate giants. “How
can we bring music that fills a need for

consumers?” asks Burnett, before
emphatically answering his own
question. “Go out on a limb. That’s
where the fruit is.”

C LARK FETCHED UP in

Nashville at the back end of the
’90s. Having grown up in
a small logging community
in Washington, she
worked on Music Row
for years before finally
making headway
with two credits on
RebaMcEntire’s
2010 album, All
The Women I Am.

*

Clockwise from top left:

Brad Paisley,Sturgill
Simpson, Brandy Clark,

Lee Ann Womack, Miranda
Lambert, Kacey Musgraves
and Angaleena Presley. Inset
bottom right: Dierks Bentley

TODD WAWRYCHUK/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES; RANDEE ST NICHOLAS

KaceyMusg raves
performing “Follow
Your Arrow” at the
2015 CM A Awards

makes them happy.” Country music, she stressed, was
supposed to be about real life, real issues. The song was
one of three co-writes with Clark on Same Trailer
Different Park. The album, which went on to win a
Grammy and shift half a million copies, also introduced
Musgraves as a major commercial force, having
transcended her beginnings on the Americana circuit.
Musgraves had previously been signed to Lost
Highway, the alt.country arm of Universal Nashville
and home to artists like Ryan Adams, Lucinda
Williams, The Jayhawks. She was doing acoustic
shows in low-key venues, singing songs about religion,
rebellion, her Texan upbringing and a heavenly
ambition to “ burn one with John Prine”. Having grown
up listening to hardcore country and the folksier end
of the spectrum - a trajectory that took her from Buck
Owens and Loretta Lynn to Prine and Ray Wylie
Hubbard - Musgraves was busy aligning herself with
a certain kind of singer-storyteller.

She’d already released three independent albums
prior to the Lost Highway deal. When the label folded
soon after, Mercury Nashville signed her up and duly
threw their weight behind “Merry Go ’Round”, a
baleful, grubby evocation of smalltown life in rural
America. A vehicle for her wry take on family
dysfunction, “Merry Go ’Round” was a hit on
Americana radio before it fanned out further. Mercury
were priming her for the big time while being
careful not to dilute her artistic credibility. It
doesn’t necessarily follow that selling cartloads of
records on a major label is the result of an artistic
compromise. Aside from her lyrical themes -
sexual equality, drugs, domestic bondage, the
thin end of life’s wedge - the physical sound of
Musgraves is more akin to her heroes than any
concession to a pop-country crossover. The
textures are delicate and understated, often
built around electric and acoustic guitars,
embellished with harmonies and discreet pedal

© She followed up with songs for Miranda Lambert,

LeAnn Rimes and The Band Perry, though her true
creative breakthrough came when she met Kacey
Musgraves. “Follow Your Arrow”, co-written with
Musgraves and Shane Me Anally, found the openly gay
Clark offering a plea for tolerance. The thrust of the song
- be true to yourself and the rest be damned - was made
explicit in the lines: “ Make lots ofnoise/Kiss lots of boys/
Or kiss lots of girls if that's something you're into/When
the straight and narrow gets a little too straight/Roll up a
joint/Or don't/Followyour arrow wherever it points".

In November 2013, Musgraves picked up the New
Artist Of The Year gong at Nashville’s annual CMA
Awards. The ceremony capped an eventual few
months for the 25-year-old, whose major-label debut
Same Trailer Different Parkhad topped the country
charts and reached No 2 on Billboard. Televised live,
the show saw Musgraves perform “Follow Your
Arrow”. ABC network bosses, however, saw fit to
censor the (( joint ’’reference completely (though the
song’s earlier reference to smoking crack was allowed
to go by unedited).

It was a controversial moment, for sure. The spike in
demand for “Follow Your Arrow” was immediate.
Before the end of the night, it had risen from nowhere
into the iTunes Top 30. Certain conservatives,
meanwhile, decried the song as a calculated attack
on Christians. Colorado pastor and radio host Kevin
Swanson, not a man known for his moderate views,
even suggested that, had Musgraves played it in a
Denver bar in the 1920s, “somebody would’ve
called for a rope”. He accused her of promoting
both homosexuality and the abandonment of
the traditional church.

Musgraves wasn’t exactly surprised by the
mini-backlash. In her press conference
afterwards, she maintained that the tune
was “areally positive anthem, just
encouraging people of all kinds to do whatever

Miranda
Lambert
(top) and
Angaleena
Presley

48 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

steel. “It’s relatively unvarnished, that’s the thing that
separates it from the real mainstream,” says Bob Harris.

“All mainstream music is so much cut’n’paste, whereas this
music is still made from the floor. They don’t over-produce it
and it does reveal the emotion of the person who’s delivering
it. Thank goodness for Rosanne Cash, as well. She went
through her big production phase in the ’80s and then,
almost stage by stage, she unhooked herself from all of
those machines. And for the last 15 years or so she’s just been
making albums that express her , without anything getting
in the way. And it’s definitely the same with Kacey and
Brandy Clark and Ashley Monroe. They’re all cut from a
similarly honest cloth.”

For those who remain suspicious of more mainstream
country, Harris believes that Musgraves embodies the fresh
sensibility that’s swept across Nashville in recent times.
“I’ve never liked cheesy country,” he reveals. “When Radio
2 started talking to me about taking over the country show,

I couldn’t have considered doing it if it meant I had to play
that stuff. But country has now pulled away from what
was once verging over into MOR. And Kacey has to be the
most obvious place to start. Typically, Americana radio is
playing her, as well as people like Rosanne Cash. And it’s
that group of women that she’s a part of - Ashley Monroe,
Brandy Clark, Angaleena Presley - who I’d be playing to
a diehard country fan, to say: ‘Look, these are the artists
who will take you across to a more roots-based approach
to album-making.’”

“Americana is a type of between-the-cracks sound that
may borrow from many existing genres yet belongs, strictly
speaking, to none,” offers Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner.

“These women are more about how country music proper
is extending its reach, having bored itself to tears with its
current subset of subject matter and cliche and typecast
frontmen. Maybe it’s a barometer of a larger national trend.”

C LARK, MONROE, PRESLEY and Miranda Lambert
all promise to breach the gap between Americana
and the more commercial end of Nashville. These
are lyrical, pithy diarists of modern society who, at the same
time, provide a link to the classic tropes of another era. As
with Musgraves, they tend to people their songs with rural
characters often trapped in bad marriages, rotten jobs or
smalltown inertia. It’s a state of affairs captured in any
number of tunes, from Monroe’s “Two Weeks Late” (“7 bet
Ym the talk of this town/Ifyou don't have a ring then he won't
settle down") to the cheating rat in Clark’s semi-comedic

BUYERS’GUIDE

Your guide to the best recent
country albums

SAME TRAILER,
DIFFERENT
PARK

MERCURY
£ NASHVILLE,2013

This Grammy-winning breakthrough
from country’s brightest new star is
remarkable for its elegant songcraft
(Musgraves often co-writing with
Shane McAnally) and its post-Loretta
take on social issues.

12 STORIES

SLATE CREEK, 2013

Sharp, dry, moving
and often funny as
hell, Clark sings of
vengeful lovers (“Stripes”), bored
housewives (“Get High”), adultery
(“What Will Keep Me Out Of Heaven”)
and fading hope (“Pray To Jesus”).

WHEELHOUSE

,r : ' 1 ’ 1 ARISTA NASHVILLE,

-• * ■ 2013

A rarity in the
higher echelons
of Nashville country, Paisley is a left¬

leaning artist who looks the part but
addresses issues of racial inequality,
domestic abuse and the ambiguity of
his Southern roots. This ninth studio
effort is an ideal primer.

ANNIE UP

RCA NASHVILLE,
2013

Before they went
their separate
ways, the trio of Miranda Lambert,
Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley
delivered a second LP heaped with sass
and harmonies. Bluegrass at its core, it
diarised a woman’s lot with sly humour,
attitude and pinches of heartache.

LIKE A ROSE

WARNERS
NASHVILLE,2013

A fine patchwork
of old-school
country and sharp modernity, with
songs that subvert Opry tradition.
“Weed Instead Of Roses”, for example,
suggests that flowers aren’t always the
best route to a girl’s heart.

CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE

BrandyClark:
dealing with
women's issues

"I write as
I feel. I'm
not gonna
smooth out
any edges of
the truth”
BRANDYCLARK

“Stripes” (“7 can't believe you'd do that on our bed/I got a
pistol and I got a bullet/And a pissed-offfinger just'a itchin'
to pull it") to the lost protagonists of Presley’s “Pain Pills”
(“The girl next door on the bathroomfloor/Thinkin''bout
takin'her a little bit more/Ain't never been this bad before").

This is no token brand of cultural tourism. Like Loretta
Lynn before her, Presley comes from time-honoured
country tradition: a coal miner’s daughter from Kentucky.
What’s more, her mother is descended from the McCoys,
whose notorious 19th-Century feud with the Hatfields is a
central tenet of Southern folklore. The songs on American
Middle Class are freighted with recent social history, from
recession-hit families on welfare to unwanted pregnancies
to cars full of “pillbillies looking to score".

“I’m a hillbilly from the mountains and in my culture
we’re storytellers,” explains Presley. “So a lot of that is in my
DNA. My mom used to sing all these Scots-Irish folk songs
to me and a lot of my melodies come from that. Oral history
is a big part of the Appalachian culture. Every single song
on American Middle Class is an experience that I’ve lived
or people really close to me have lived. ‘Pain Pills’ was
inspired by seven different funerals that I’d gone to, for
people from my hometown who died from a prescription
medication overdose. All of the characters in that song ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 49

DAVID McCLISTER

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NONESUCH

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER TIME
CELEBRATING THE MUSIC OF
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS'

This two-disc collection captures a one-night-only concert
held in 2013 to celebrate the music of the Coen brothers
film, featuring live performances by Joan Baez, Elvis
Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Marcus Mumford, Conor
Oberst, Punch Brothers, Gillian Welch, and Jack White.

‘Surprising collaborations and stately performances
breathing new life into old songs and old fire into new
ones. Highlights: plentiful.’ Independent On Sunday

BOYHOOD

MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE

Shot over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater’s
acclaimed, award-winning film is a groundbreaking story
of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child who
literally grows up on screen before the viewers’ eyes. The
soundtrack’s songs range from the year 2000 (Coldplay
and The Hives) to 2013 (Yo La Tengo).

There has simply never been anything like this film.

This is the kind of film you see and say, 1 may never
see anything like this again’. ’ Rolling Stone

KHIAfrNOtf jioLeNs

RHIANNON GIDDENS
TOMORROW IS MY TURN

The singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding
member of Carolina Chocolate Drops makes her solo
recording debut, produced by T Bone Burnett, featuring a
broad range of songs from genres as diverse as gospel,
jazz, blues, and country.

“It was clear the first time I heard her that Rhiannon
is next in a long line of singers that include Marian
Anderson, Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta Tharpe.

We need that person in our culture.” T Bone Burnett

JONNY GREENWOOD
INHERENT VICE

The soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, an
adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel, includes nine
works by Greenwood; an unreleased Radiohead tune
performed with members of Supergrass; and recordings
from the movie’s era, the tail end of the psychedelic ’60s,
including Can, Minnie Riperton and Neil Young.

Anderson’s films have great soundtracks. And this is no
exception. Its hypnotic qualities confirm Greenwood’s
growth into a first-rate film composer.’ Daily Mail

TlflftAN HA^ASVAN

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TIGRAN HAMASYAN
MOCKROOT

The label debut from the acclaimed pianist comprises
new tracks written by Hamasyan, as well as his
arrangements of traditional Armenian songs.

There are many brilliant and perfectly finished young
jazz pianists around, but Hamasyan stands out because
he has something important and urgent to say!

Daily Telegraph

PUNCH BROTHERS

THE PHOSPHORESCENT BLUES

Joining forces with producer T Bone Burnett, the band
examines modern life, or, as Chris Thile puts it, asks: “How
do we cultivate beautiful, three-dimensional experiences
with our fellow man in this day and age?”

‘Brilliant, audacious, original and, above all, entertaining;
Punch Brothers put on a show that pushes the
boundaries of excellence in contemporary music
performance in virtually all directions.’ The Times’

nonesuch.com

© are people that I’ve known. It’s hard, but it’s also therapy.
Songwriting has always been my pacifier. I think a lot of
people relate to the album. It might not be their exact story,
but my intention was just to be real and honest, in the hope
that people would connect with it.”

Like the women who beat a path through the male-
dominated country realm of the late ’50s and ’60s, these are
vivid portraits of the female experience. An echo of a time
when Loretta Lynn gave the all-boys club a bloodied nose
with songs like “Rated X” or “The Pill”, or when Kitty Wells
railed against male double standards on “It Wasn’t God
Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”. Indeed, the classic
traditionalism of Presley is tempered with a little country-
soul, blues and gospel. It’s not difficult to picture Lucinda
Williams, for instance, purring her way through the
Memphis-styled “Ain’t No Man”. Or Caitlin Rose crying hurt

over “Blessing And A Curse”.
If American Middle Class
rings true on a lyrical level,
it also rings true sonically.
“There’s definitely nothing
slick about it,” asserts
Presley. “My husband
[Jordan Powell] and I
decided to produce the
record ourselves. One of the
reasons for that was that I
could hear exactly what this
record sounded like in my
head. I wanted to make it
sound like a real musical
experience. We hired some
genius players and I think it worked.”

There is a purity to Presley’s vision - and that of Clark,
Musgraves, Monroe and Lambert - that carries the ring
of authenticity. If the key to Americana is predicated on
integrity and honesty, and a certain amount of confessional
truth, they all stake a fair claim. And, in Kurt Wagner’s eyes,
a traditional rural background can help. “It certainly
doesn’t hurt,” he says, “and I find that compelling if
handled in an honest manner. That type of background has
existed for years in the bluegrass and gospel world. And it’s
starting to sneak through into the mainstream with people
like Angaleena or Sturgill Simpson. In my opinion, Sturgill
is the future and reality of what the soul of country is and
should be. It’s a shame the Americana ghetto is where he’s
being cast, as he’s the real deal right before our eyes.”

"Sturgill
Simpson is
the future
of what
the soul of
country is”
KURTWAGNER

BUYERS’GUIDE

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

AMERICAN
MIDDLE CLASS

SLATE CREEK,2014

Arresting debut,
evoking the bold
simplicity of Dottie West or Willie
Nelson while drawing on her back¬
ground in a Kentucky hill community.
Cue real-life tales of working struggle,
dead-beat husbands, bad drugs, crises
of faith and Wal-Mart ennui.

RISER

CAPITOL NASHVILLE,
2014

Bentley’s eighth LP
is a thoughtful,
ballad-heavy affair, recorded in the
wake of his father’s death. Like Luke
The Drifter with added twang, the
Arizona native offers a bittersweet
alternative to bro-country back-
slapping on tunes like “Bourbon In
Kentucky” and “Drunk On A Plane”.

v

THE WAY I’M
LIVIN’

SUGAR HILL,2014

The onetime
pop-country icon

burrows deep into her traditional roots

%

for a bunch of covers - Hayes Carll,
Chris Knight, Julie Miller, et al - that
essay tales of loneliness, desperation
and quiet despair. Womack’s band
offer a masterclass in understatement,
allowing her voice to ring hard and true.

if 1

__ Kdipf' *:fll HUCfJ —

THKOL TSII>i: RS

THE OUTSIDERS

EMI NASHVILLE,

2014

The outlaw spirit of
Waylon Jennings
stalks the fourth LP from this North
Carolina hip-shooter, albeit dashed
with R&B and strafed with guitar licks
that owe more to metal. Church’s plural
approach is best heard on “Talladega”
and “That’s Damn Rock & Roll”.

PLATINUM

RCA NASHVILLE,
2014

The Nashville

—-- Beyonce, Lambert

takes the essence of raw country to
concoct a postmodern stew of Southern
rock, Sly-ish funk and smart samples.
Platinum is a riot of moods, from wise¬
cracking wit to broken introspection.

Sturgill Simpson:
the real deal

F IFTEEN YEARS AGO, Lee Ann Womack was

squarely at the heart of commercial country with the
platinum-selling I Hope To Dance. Her latest, The
Way Pm Livin' , is her first studio release in six years and
feels very much like a statement of intent. It’s a wonderfully
uncluttered set of covers whose impact is magnified by
economical use of steel, strings and guitar. “To get radio
airplay these days, you have to cut stuff that I just don’t care
for,” Womack says. “This album is not really that left of
centre, it’s just stripping away the stuff that wasn’t really
me. It’s what I consider to be straight-up country.” It’s also
a record that sits neatly alongside those of her younger
contemporaries like Clark and Musgraves. “Lee Ann has
made an album which is quite raw, from a production
angle,” argues Bob Harris. “She’s made a record that she
really wanted to make, without any compromises. It’s an
interesting process that so many artists go through. Look
at Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin, for example, stripping
everything back to the absolute core. That’s what
Americana really is: it pulls everything back down to
the roots. That’s what’s so distinctive about it.”

Harris believes that another vital factor in all of these
works - from 12 Stories through to The Way I'm Livin' -
is a lack of contrivance. It’s what sets them apart from ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 51

MELISSA MADISON FULLER

JOHN SCARPATI

i *c

© mainstream country: “These artists are exposing what
they really are, without letting production or record labels
or anything else get in the way of that. It flips everything on
its axis, because then the production is used to enhance the
tone, lyrics and atmosphere of the song. They don’t drown
it, they enhance it. And that’s an important distinction.”

“Now I feel really free to be around like-minded people,”
adds Womack, revelling in her status as a new signing to
Nashville roots label, Sugar Hill. “There was a time when I’d
go to an industry function and, if there was a Steve Earle or
a Buddy Miller in the room, I’d look over and think: ‘One day
I’m going to get to play with the big boys!’ And that’s where
I’m headed now. It’s like a goal for me.”

The Way I'm Livin' was co-produced by Womack’s
husband Frank Liddell, Glenn Worf and Chuck Ainlay.

The same team is also behind Miranda Lambert’s Grammy-
winning Platinum , a hugely successful album that gave
the Nashville songwriter her first US No 1. The self-styled
“backyard swagger” of Lambert (formerly in Pistol Annies
with Monroe and Presley) is dry, funny, intelligent and
traditional at heart, albeit with a little extra flash. It’s also,
crucially, a prime example of a mainstream country artist
with edge, the brash simplicity of its production evoking the
strident sound of ’60s forebears like Loretta Lynn and
Tammy Wynette. “Miranda’s songs are so bold, you can’t
put your standard country-radio attitude on it,” Ainlay
explains. “It has to be brave new territory. This is
why it’s refreshing when an artist like Miranda or
Kacey Musgraves or Angaleena Presley has an
opportunity to get heard.” 4

EYEWTINESSES

The changing face
of Nashville
revealed...

T

HERE’S

FINALLY

toward looking beyond I
the formula to subjects I
that are more in touch I

with a personal reality,” I

says Lambchop’s Kurt I

Wagner, addressing I

the changing face of I

songwriting in his I

hometown of Nashville. [ JackWhite

“It’s starting to become

quirky and edgy,

reminiscent of the ’60s and the

feminine vehicle of a woman’s voice like

Kitty Wells or Loretta Lynn. There’s a

plain truth, a tell-it-like-it-is approach.”

While the traditional infrastructure
is very much still in place, Nashville’s
newfound plurality can only be a good
thing. At least according to Cliff
O’Sullivan, Senior Vice President at
Sugar Hill Records. “Up until a few
years ago the perception was that it was
still hee-haw in Nashville,” he offers.
“But it’s just not like that. There are so
many different directions of music and
artists that have moved here: Keb’ Mo’,

aw

V \ 4 . JK

The Black
Keys

I The Black Keys, Jack
I White, Ben Folds. It’s
I just a thriving music
I world here. I call it
MK ^ I the Laurel Canyon
m ■ I of this decade. And

M f I when it comes to

CL I country artists like

jl J f I Lee Ann Womack or

■ ft/ I Kacey Musgraves or

* 1 Brandy Clark, the

I deal is that good
I singers don’t really go
^mm out of style. Country
music swung in a pop
direction for a number of years, but
now we’re ready for something more
original. These people concentrate
more on the songs, which of course
is what Nashville was built on.”

“A lot of artists you don’t associate
with country are coming to Nashville
to record,” adds Bob Harris, a regular
visitor. “And they’re bringing their own
atmosphere, so any session musicians
or producers are going to be affected
by this wind of change. Nashville is the
main music city in the world now. You
get a sense of being at the centre of this
great energy. It’s an incredible feeling.”

T HE CURRENT HEALTH of populist male
country, meanwhile, is debatable. The
continued dominance of‘bro-country’ -
focusing on boozing, partying, roaring round in
pick-ups and leering at young women - is as
depressing as it is baffling. One high-profile talent
who prefers to do things differently is Dierks Bentley.

His current album Riser is a bittersweet mix of
drunken ruminations and sombre reflections, its mood
occasionally lightened by some sparkling melodic twists.
Kacey Musgraves even appears on one number, “Bourbon
In Kentucky”. But Bentley remains an exception. “If there
is a sea change going on, it’s being driven by the women,”
notes Michael Weston King, who, alongside wife Lou
Dalgleish, is one half of Americana outfit My Darling
Clementine. “Some of them are less bombastic and cliched
than what passed for country music in the past 10 or 20
years. Ashley Monroe, for instance, mines a classic
country theme. The sound of her recordings harks back
to a former, better time, sound-wise. And the fact she’s
co-writing with Guy Clark has got to be good.” King also

“Ifthere isasea
change going on.
it's being driven
by the women”

MICHAEL WESTON KING

Michael
Weston King

) of My Darling
Clementine

maintains that, despite the garish public stereotype,
“country was always cool. You just needed to know
where to look. Real fans, like myself, go deeper and
connect with the voices, the melodies and the
emotion of it.”

For Bob Harris, any lingering prejudice towards
country music is negligible. “In the last five to ten
years, the country scene has gone through a major
revolution in every respect,” he explains. “Especially
the sound. We now have a much more authentic
strain of music. People like Kitty Wells and Hank
Williams are actually the touch points for what a lot
of the current Americana people are going back to.”

He cites Wells, in particular, as a key figure in the rise of
this new generation of players. “You cannot overstate how
important she is to the sound of American women in
country. In the ’50s she was creating the template that
people like Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark and
Angaleena Presley are building on now. That’s what
characterises all of them. Country music’s in the best state
that it’s been in for years. I think everybody’s agreed on
that. These are exciting times.” ©

C2C: Country To Country runs from March 7-8 at London's
O2 centre. Visitwww.C2c-countrytocountry.com for details

52 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

FRESH BLOOD

THE NEW ALBUM | Out 09.03.15

CD / LP / Limited Deluxe 2 x LP

with bonus lp - FRESH BLOOD : NO SKIN

a complete minimalist mix of the album

dominorecordco.com

JACK MONSOON

ALBUM BYALBUM

The The

Matt Johnson’s long strange trip: involves
truthful music, giant spiders, jungle
mindwarps and magic mushroom tea

OR OVER 30 years now, Matt Johnson has been pursuing
a brilliant if idiosyncratic career in his guise as The The.
There have been experimental electronic records, chart
hits, social and political polemics, Hank Williams covers
and, most recently, a spate of soundtrack projects. “Pd like
to leave a nice body of work that is relatively unsullied,”
admits Johnson. As he prepares to talk Uncut through his splendid career
highs - including his latest score for the British crime thriller Hyena - he
reveals that work is currently underway on a new The The LP proper. “The
important thing is getting yourself in the frame of mind for it,” he explains.
“Everything else follows from that. Having been away for so long, I have
almost forgotten who I used to be. I almost forgot I was a songwriter in the
first place, which is a horrible thing to say. But if it all goes to plan, the album
will have freshness to it. It’ll be a new start for my career.” Michael bonner

MATT JOHNSON
BURNING BLUE SOUL

The son of an East
London publican,
Johnson proved to be
a prolific songwriter:
technically, this was his
second album. Contains
tape-collages and sonic
experimentation.

I’d been in bands since the age of n and working
full-time in a recording studio at 15, so I almost
felt like a bit of a veteran by the time I released
Burning Blue Soul. I already had a lot of
recordings, including an album, See Without
Being Seen, which was seven tracks I recorded
between a little home studio that I built in the
cellar of my parents’ pub and the studio that I
worked at in Soho. The relationship with 4 AD
had started with the single “Controversial
Subject”. I was operating a solo career and The
The as a band at the same time, although it
became a solo operation. Between “Controversial
Subject” and Burning Blue Soul, I recorded a
single for Some Bizzare, “Cold Spell Ahead”. This
was all pretty much taking place during the same
18-month period. I think the first tracks recorded
for Burning Blue Soul were “Time Again For The
Golden Sunset” and “The River Flows East In
Spring”, with Bruce and Graham from Wire.
Around about this time, Ivo said, “You’ve got
plenty of ideas yourself. How do you feel about
producing yourself?” So they were recorded in
pairs, I think. I did “Red Cinders In The Sand”
and “Delirious” with an engineer called Pete
Maben in Forest Gate. I went to Cambridge with
Ivo to a studio, and did “Icing Up” and “Another
Boy Drowning”. It was done piecemeal in
different studios with different engineers. The
whole thing was done for £1,800.

4AD, 1981

THE THE
SOUL MINING

SOME BIZZARE/EPIC, 1983

I | JN QbfCi An early classic, as

Johnson delivers an
accomplished set,
including landmark
tracks “This Is The Day”
and “Uncertain Smile”.

I was pleasantly
surprised by last year’s
fantastic response to the reissue! I still get a lot of
letters from people asking about it. I hadn’t heard
it for a long time until I went into remaster it and I
thought it sounded great. So I was hopeful other
people thought the same way; and I’m pleased
that the album still means a lot to people. My key
collaborator was Paul Hardiman. Funnily
enough, I saw him for the first time in 30 years
a few weeks ago. I did a radio show about the
Garden Studios in Shoreditch that I used to own.
He came round to my place, we turned a tape
recorder on and he hadn’t changed. He’s very,
very funny. After Soul Mining, we did a track
called “Flesh And Bones”. I don’t know what
went on, whether there was a dispute between
his manager, who was his wife at the time, and
my then manager Stevo. In those days, I wasn’t
thinking about themes... when you’re doing your
early album, you just write. You have songs you’ll
possibly be working on for years -1 was just a
teenager when I wrote some of the songs on Soul
Mining. Later, once you’ve established yourself
you can approach a project and place certain
parameters over the subject matter. In the early
days, it’s all instinctual, just how you feel. I grew
up listening to The Beatles. Lennon used to say,
“Tell the truth and make it rhyme.” You can’t get
simpler advice than that. That’s what I wanted to
do, be truthful: “This is how I feel at this moment
in time”, rather than intellectualising it.

THE UNCUT CLASSIC

| ail

■k 7*1 171

IJ|i*yiifLll

THE THE INFECTED

SOME BIZZARE/EPIC, 1986

Johnson’s impassioned response to
Thatcherism. Tom Waits is nearly involved;
a large quantity of exotic narcotics are
consumed while making the accompanying
Video album’ in Peru.

After Soul Mining, I was eager to move in another
direction. I’d always been aware politically, but
Infected was my reaction to the growing strangle¬
hold of Thatcherism. John Lydon told me it was
the most spiteful record he’d heard in years, a
huge compliment! I was a fan of Tom Waits and
Holger Czukay, and thought it would be amazing
to collaborate with them. I was very confident.

I just reached out. I also contacted Brian Eno,
who came back lukewarm. We didn’t hear from
Holger, but Tom Waits got back and said, “Come

54 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

THE THE
MIND BOMB

EPIC, 1989

THE THE
DUSK

SONY, 1993

over to New York, hang out and discuss it.” So we
spent a week talking about it. We played a lot of
pool - he thrashed me. He wasn’t drinking at the
time, just soda water and bitters. But he had a big
thing going on. He just fired his manager, he was
living in the Chelsea Hotel, just finishing off Rain
Dogs . So it was a fantastic trip, but he said, “I
think you could produce yourself. I’d love to do it
but I’ve got so many things going on, I just can’t
commit to you.” The films came about because
I didn’t want a tour. It would have been hard
without the huge, expensive cast of musicians to
do it justice live. But Stevo suggested we make a
film for every track on the LP, and we’d tour that
instead. I knew Tim Pope through Soft Cell, and
he shot films for three tracks and Peter ‘Sleazy’
Christopherson, who I knew from Throbbing
Gristle and Psychic TV, also shot three. We filmed
“Heartland” in an ex-gasworks in South London,
but for the others we went a little bit more exotic.
We went to New York to do “Out Of The Blue”, in
a brothel in Harlem - we had to have police
protection. Then we went to Peru and Bolivia
with Sleazy. It was amazing we all got back alive.
You can imagine the purity of the coke down
there. We started in Iquitos, where Fitzcarraldo
was shot. We got taken into the jungle by a former
Peruvian army guide who was well-connected.
There was a scene in “The Mercy Beat” where we
came across a crazy communist rally, and I’m
handling snakes and monkeys... I was out of it
most of the time, hallucinating giant spiders on
the hotel walls. The stuff was too strong. I flew
back from Bolivia via Amsterdam, so you can
imagine what happened when Customs got hold
of me. They had me in the interview room down to
my underpants. Luckily they didn’t strip search
me! I think one of them recognised me from TV...

MIND BOMB

For this incarnation
of The The, Johnson
decides to assemble a
full band - including an
old friend from the
North West-
Johnny Marr and I have
known each other from
the Burning Blue Soul days. I used to go up to
Manchester, I was out all the time, and I met a lot
of people, including Johnny. He then formed The
Smiths and used to stay at my bedsit in Highbury
when taking their demos around. Then we sort of
lost touch. Meanwhile, I was touring Infected in
Australia, and I met Billy Bragg who invited me
to play at Red Wedge. I enjoyed it, and I thought,
‘Maybe I should start thinking about playing live
again...’ And so as I was writing Mind Bomb , I
started writing it with the idea of a band. I got
Dave Palmer and James Eller, and we’d already
started doing the recording before Johnny got
involved. We hadn’t seen each other for years,
then we bumped into each other at an Iggy Pop
gig. He came over to my place in East London,
and we ended up sitting up until 6am, by which
time it was agreed he was joining the band -
coming on tour, everything. The album was done
over quite a long time - it cost about 300 grand!
The recording was intense -1 went on this diet
that I forced some of the others to go on, where
we’d drink distilled water and eat organic grapes
for months ’til people started hallucinating!
During the writing, I’d meditate and do magic
mushroom tea. So that’s where all this stuff was
coming from: clash of civilisations, Islam...
Oddly, Mind Bomb did well when it came out. But
it’s one of those records people say has become
more relevant due to what’s been going on since.

A difficult album for
Johnson: recorded
following the death
of his brother, it also
marked the dissolution
of the Mine /Bomb lineup.
My younger brother died
suddenly in the middle
of the Mind Bomb tour. I took three months off,

I was devastated, we were a very close family.

My mother never really recovered. I had huge
support from everyone around me at the time,
but when we went back on tour again, it was
awful because I kept seeing my brother’s face in
the audience. When that tour finally finished, it
really hit me, I went in a quiet, deep, sad state. So
Dusk was focused on personal things, and “Love
Is Stronger Than Death” was written for my
brother. And, to be honest, I lost a lot of focus in
terms of being a strict taskmaster. Things started
to fall apart with that band. Dave Palmer [drums]
started to get into some serious drug thing, his
timing got affected, he was showing up late, and
Dave was always very professional. So I warned
him, then I fired him halfway through the album.
I brought in Vinnie Colaiuta, from Zappa’s band,
and Bruce Smith from The Pop Group. The odd
thing is, although it was more of a band recording
- there was more live recording than with Mind
Bomb -1 felt the closeness of the band wasn’t
there so much anymore. Johnny had started
doing Electronic with Bernard. Dave was all over
the place. James was still focused, but it didn’t
feel as much of a band effort as Mind Bomb . It’s
funny, though. It’s one of my favourite albums,
Dusk, I love that record. Everybody did a fantastic
job, but at that point, I went on tour and the
band had already fallen apart. ©

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 55

JOHANNA SAINT MICHAELS

THE THE

©THE THE
HANKY PANICY

SONY, 1994

A new band, plus an
unexpected career
swerve: an album of
Hank Williams covers,
no less.

I was always a big fan
__ of a great songwriter.

Hank Williams, John

Lennon... Because I was taking so long writing,

I thought, ‘You know what, I just want to enjoy
being a singer.’ I don’t even think I played any
instruments on that album. I put together
another band, with a chap called Eric
Schermerhorn, who I’d wanted to join for the
Dusk tour but he was with Iggy Pop at the time.
Brian MacLeod, Gail Ann Dorsey, who then
joined David Bowie. It was a good band, but I just
wanted to get inside another songwriter’s songs.
It was almost like a vacation in terms of my
song writing. Dusk was quite a hard record to
write, given the subject matter, but I wanted
to keep working. There were a lot of raised
eyebrows at the label, but at that point I think
they were used to my behaviour. There’s a good
phrase that sums it up: ‘Making ah the wrong
career moves for ah the right reasons’. But to be
honest, they did get behind this record. It got
fantastic reviews over in America. Hank’s
daughter wrote me a lovely letter saying, ‘My
daddy would be proud with what you’ve done
with his songs.’ So it was an interesting project.

THE THE
NAICEDSELF

NOTHING/UNIVERSAL, 2000

Johnson returns to
tackle familiar subjects:
alienation, global
corruption and
urban decay.

At this point, I was living
in New York permanently.
I had my first child over
there, so I’m taking longer than the label would
have hoped to make another record. The
relationship with Sony was always warm, but my
main beef was how artists are generally treated
for their contracts. This is where the Gun Sluts
album comes in. They hated Gun Sluts , it was my
version of Metal Machine Music . I wasn’t doing it
to break the contract. It’s just where I was at the
time, going in some interesting new directions,
listening to experimental music. So I wrote
NakedSelf, which coincided with me coming to
the end of my contract. I was happy to stay with
Sony, but I wanted a proper contract. They said,
“We can’t give you what you want at this stage,
we just don’t see big hits.” I was quite upset, but
they were right because there weren’t any big hits
on it. I then shifted over to Universal Interscope.

I hated it. There was only one part of Universal
that showed any interest, the German outlet,
they were fantastic. Strangely, NakedSelf got the
best reviews of any record I ever made! I thought
it was crazy. The tour support ran out for a
six-month world tour, so I started to pay for it
out of my own pocket, because I really believed
in the album and the band. Earl Harvin on
drums, Spencer Campbell on bass and Eric
Schermerhorn. It was like the Charge Of The
Light Brigade, really. If I was to put another band

together again, it would probably be the
NakedSelfband. We’re still talking about
playing together again.

THE THE
TONY

CINEOLA, 2010

Johnson forms his own
company, Cineola, to
release the first major
collaboration with his
brother, filmmaker
Gerard, and their cousin,
actor Peter Ferdinando.

I played David Bowie’s
Meltdown with Jim Thirlwell in 2002. After that,

I pretty much retired. I didn’t pick up a guitar for
years, put ah my stuff into storage and started
living abroad, in Spain, Sweden, and in America.
I was being offered contracts by record labels
but after the Universal experience I was so
disillusioned. Then, gradually, the soundtrack
thing came about. My younger brother and my
ex-partner who is a Swedish documentary
maker, started to ask me to do stuff. There was a
bit of insecurity: do I want to do music anymore,
and how do I do it? But this seemed a good way
of getting back into the studio. I have worked on
Hollywood films, I did the Sylvester Stallone
Judge Dredd film, but I’d rather work on smaller
projects and have more of a collaborative
involvement with the director. Gerard, my
brother, had already made a couple of short
films, and he used some of my pre-existing
instrumental music. With Tony, we talked about
the sound palette. I like soundtracks that have
a specific tonal range, otherwise it can end up
becoming a bit too much. We decided to go with a
more acoustic tone, with a bit of electronics, but
the main theme would be a simple piano motif. It
went very, very well. Gerard was very happy with
it. He did the whole film for £40,000. That’s even
more impressive than Burning Blue Soull

THE THE
HYENA

Another self-contained
experimental score, this
time harking back to
techniques deployed
during the earliest days
of The The.

It was a more intense
experience due to the

time frame. I had about two weeks to write and
record it. I’d already worked with Gerard on the
tonal palette, we experimented and got the right
sound. I revived the old Terry Riley machinery,
the Time Lag Accumulator. I used to play around
with tape loops when I was younger, around
Burning Blue Soul and I decided to bring that
technology back for this as I thought it would
build up these strange, quite dense soundscapes.
But I had ah sorts of technical problems in the
studio. The speakers blew up, the tape recorders
blew up, everything that could go wrong, went
wrong. It was a bloody nightmare. Then between
the recording and the 5:1 mixing, I had to pop to
Sweden for 24 hours to deal with a personal issue.
I was so run-down at this point, I got tonsillitis on
the way back! So during mixing I had a jug of
Solpadeine in one hand and Lemsip in the other,
to keep myself going. It was like going back in
time, finding that energy I had during Burning
Blue Soul. But we got through it. I think it’s the
best soundtrack I’ve done. Gerard was thrilled,
which was the most important thing for me.
There’s a few other soundtracks that haven’t
been released. I also did a Turkish/Lebanese film
and a series of Scandinavian documentaries.
They’re going to be released as one volume, along
with some spoken-word recordings. So there’s a
lot of stuff in the pipeline, but I’m anxious to get
back to writing the music, to be honest. ©

Hyena is reviewed on page 84

CINEOLA, 2015

56 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

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KIMFOWLEY 1939-2015

“I’m the most
phenomenal man
in the record
business!”

Uncut salutes The Lord Of Garbage, one of rock’s most mercurial and
charismatic figures, and rescues a hair-raising 1972 Fowley interview
from the Melody Maker archives. “I have millions of dollars from all this
crap,” he tells Richard Williams, “so to any future Beatles,
this is your man!” Good clean fun? Not a chance!

Original story: Richard Williams, Melody Maker, November 25,1972

I CAN KILL PEOPLE, cheat, seduce,

amuse and abuse people,” Kim Fowley
told Uncut in 2005. “I know how to tear
up the sidewalk with my fingers and find
a rose poking through the cement.” Bold
provocations were Fowley’s stock-in-
trade, but during a career spanning
almost 60 years there are few others
who can claim as many wide-ranging accomplishments.
Producer, songwriter, musician, manager and impresario,
Fowley - who died on January 15,2015 from cancer - was one
of rock’s most charismatic, mercurial figures. He intuitively
understood the mythological power of rock’n’roll in a way
that few other people could harness. “He’d been everywhere,
done everything, knew everybody,” said Steve Van Zandt.
“We should all have as full a life. Rock gypsy DNA.
Reinventing himself whenever he felt restless. Which was
always. One of the great characters of all time. Irreplaceable.”

Kim Fowley was born into the Hollywood lifestyle. His
parents were middling film and TV actors, his school friends
included Nancy Sinatra, Ryan O’Neal and Bruce Johnson.
Despite such promising circumstances, Fowley’s early life
was hardly gilded. His parents divorced and he spent time in
foster care; he later claimed in his autobiography that his
father used him as a lookout while procuring drugs or
women. Additionally, there was a bout of polio in his teens.

It seems likely that such an unfortunate series of events
conspired to alter Fowley’s perspective. His early credits -
a string of novelty singles - were cynical attempts to catch
onto emerging trends like bubblegum pop, garage rock and
psych. But they also demonstrated how sensitive he was to
the specific nuances of popular culture; Fowley understood
spectacle and could spot talent in other people, and worked
all these factors to his advantage. During the ’60s, he worked

with PJ Proby, Soft Machine, Gene Vincent and an early
incarnation of Slade; at the end of the decade, he introduced
the Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock & Roll Festival.

For a man whose aesthetic was predicated around trashy
flamboyance, Fowley flourished during the ’70s. His biggest
success during that period was The Runaways - the LA all¬
girl group Fowley brought together in 1975 and managed, as
well as producing/co-writing their first two LPs, before
eventually falling out with them. He also worked with Alice
Cooper, Kiss, Helen Reddy, Kris Kristofferson and The Modern
Lovers during this time - but despite his scattershot approach
to collaboration, he still managed to record nine solo LPs in
the ’70s alone. Fowley’s own musical output is perhaps a
lesser-documented footnote in his career; but it is possible to
discern much about his lurid and outrageous sensibilities
from songs like “Ugly Stories About Rock Stars And The War”,
“Night Of The Hunter” and “Is America Dead?”.

While Fowley never quite achieved the same success in
subsequent decades, he continued to enjoy a prolific output.
Indeed, his questing spirit continued to drive his career. He
moved into experimental filmmaking - titles include Satan Of
Silverlake and Frankenstein Goes Surfing - joined Steve Van
Zandt’s Underground Garage radio show and worked with
Ariel Pink on Pom Pom (2014). He shared his idiosyncratic pop
philosophy in 2013’s memoir Lord Of Garbage; but a more
succinct personal statement is found in the song “Kim Vincent
Fowley” for his 2012 album, Death City . There he listed details
from his life, from his early days as a male prostitute, to his
relationship with women, his poor credit rating and declining
health. He signed off drolly: “Kim Fowley, one of God’s chosen
children.” Of course, there’s no-one better to tell of Fowley’s
own deeds than Fowley himself. Over the page, he does just
that, recounting many splendid yarns - all about himself, of
course - to Richard Williams in 1972. MICHAEL BONNER ©

58 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

K IM FOWLEY’S looking for love.
“Well,” he says, snuffling into
a wad of Kleenex, “I’m real
entertaining and I have some
nice human qualities... and I’m rich.
Probably there’s some girl out there
who’d fancy me. I’m only 21 years old,
after all.”

Actually, he’s waiting for his Pleasure
Unit to return from a drunken night with
Alice Cooper and the boys. It’s a subject of some personal
distress to him.

“I saw Alice at the Speakeasy the other night. This quite
good-looking chick walks up and says ‘Hi’... I’d come onto
her a couple of days ago, but she didn’t want to know. Alice
turned his back and flirted with her, so I rushed up and
since she’s now talking to me because I’ve been seen with
Alice Cooper, I give her my Kim Fowley ‘How-would-you-
like-to-be-my-old-lady?’ rap.

“She moves in here yesterday with all her clothes and

3 shoes - she’s pretty good-looking, man, on a Raquel

<

| Welch level. So this movie star chick and I are here in my
£ Chelsea flat, ooh wow, and the phone rings and it’s one of
g the guys from Alice Cooper’s band and he pulls her over
g the telephone. Now that’s an interesting triangle... there’s
§ me, alegend, and there’s this one-hit wonder...” He
« collapses in spluttering laughter.

MELODY MAKER

25/11/1972

“I have
stage

presence...
I move like
Nureyev
and Fred
Astaire”

KIM FOWLEY

“I’m caught in a future
shock time-warp, but being
a liberated male I said, ‘Go
ahead, have a good time.’ Gave
her money for the cab, and she
said she’d be back in an hour.
Off she went, leaving this great
legendary man in bed alone.

“That was last night... SO
WHERE IS SHE?”

MAZINGLY ENOUGH,
Kim Fowley doesn’t
overrate himself. He is
a legend in his own time, with
a track record, as erratic as it’s impressive, stretching
back 11 years. He’s yesterday, he’s today, and the
chances are that we might well have to put up with
him tomorrow, as well.

Son of the actor who played Doc Holliday in the
Wyatt Earp series, and grandson of light-operetta
composer Rudolf Friml, he first ventured into the LA
music scene in 1957, singing with three members of a
black vocal group named The Jayhawks. “They’d had
a hit with ‘Stranded In The Jungle’, and this wasn’t
long afterwards, but they’d already disintegrated into
working in a barber’s shop. They used to fence hot
goods, and Bruce Johnston and I - we’d grown up
together - were into stealing car accessories, such
as hubcaps, so they used to take over our loot.

“After the spoils were divided, we were invited to
sing with them. The Del-Vikings were the big thing
then, and we had two white guys and three black
guys the same as them, so we figured we could be the
new Del-Vikings... real good to drive your car fast to.”

The following year, he and Bruce were joined in a
group named The Sleepwalkers by young Sandy
Nelson - Phil Spector even played a couple of
gigs with them, on guitar. “One day we got
courageous and decided to make our first
record, so we went down to Dolphin’s
of Hollywood - John Dolphin was the
man who wrote ‘Buzz Buzz Buzz’ for
The Hollywood Flames.

“We were sitting there trembling
in our schoolboy boots, when one of
their songwriters [Percy Ivy] came in
and killed Dolphin right in front of
us. One of the bullets ricochetted off
the wall and hit Sandy Nelson in the leg
- which was probably symbolic, because
he lost that leg a few years later.

“Everybody was scrambling around, there
was blood all over the floor, and the guy was dying.
Bruce, being a songwriter, went up to him and said, ‘Well, I
think it’s a good idea if you tell me how you feel. I mean, it’s
your last minute, isn’t it.’ For a song, you understand. He
wasn’t being horrible... he was genuinely interested in what
a dying man had to say.

“The guy was rapping and Bruce was listening and saying
‘Far out...’ and then he died. I think we all realised then that
rock’n’roll did have its outlaw characteristics.”

Fowley went into the Army for a while, and when he
returned, the band had become Bruce And Jerry, He sold
them to Doris Day’s record company - which also had Jan
And Arnie, later to become Jan And Dean.

He also made his first studio recording, with producer
Nick Venet. With Bruce, Sandy, Richard Podolor (now with
Three Dog Night) on lead guitar, “and a load of gunshot
effects stolen from ‘Western Movies’ by The Olympics”,
the record was called “Charge!”, and the group titled itself
The Renegades.

60 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

He took it to American International, where they put him
to work on a film called Diary Of A High School Bride, but he
moved over to work on publishing and promotion for Doris
Day’s company, sleeping on the office floor at nights.

“Then came Skip and Flip - Clyde Battin and Gary Paxton
- who were one of the many imageless Everly Brothers-style
bands. ‘Cherry Pie’ came out and was a hit for them, so I
became their road manager. We made a lot of records with
them that were never released - like a version of ‘Louie
Louie’ with the composer, Richard Berry, playing piano.

“We also did Gene & Eunice’s ‘Sugar Babe’ as producers
and arrangers, and then came ‘Alley-Ooop’ - The
Hollywood Argyles. Gary and I were the artists on that,
with a lot of friends helping out - like Sandy, and one of the
guys who wrote ‘Earth Angel’. “‘Alley-Ooop’ became
legendary - we were the White Coasters, and we had 26
different bands touring around under the same name,
because we were hungry for bread. We weren’t making
images then - we were making records.”

He also did The Paradons’ “Diamonds And Pearls” and
The Innocents’ “Honest I Do”, before meeting Paul Revere
And The Raiders in Idaho. He produced their first records
for the Gardens label - “Like Long Hair”, for instance.

“This was in ’61, before they reappeared as teenage slick
idols with Bruce Johnston producing them for Columbia.

In ’61 they were B. Bumble And The Stingers - Mark
Lindsay wasn’t into singing then. Then Paul and Mark
disappeared... I don’t even dare say what happened to Mark.

“Right before Mark went, Paul left because he was a
conscientious objector, on religious grounds, and Leon
Russell became Paul for a while. That was his first tour. And
The Argyles became The Raiders... they were also The
Gamblers, who did ‘Moon Dawg!’ for World Pacific, with
‘LSD 25’ on the flip - the first acid song, all those years ago.”

T HE SAME YEAR, B. Bumble
And The Stingers made
their appearance,
completely conceived
by Fowley. “The name
was owned by a little
record company called
Rendezvous, who also
had Dick Dale and the
Del-Tones. The Stingers
were black musicians, and
the pianist was a guy named
A 1 Hazan, who tried to cash
in later by recording for Phil
Spector’s label. He called
himself Ali Hassan then, and
he’s a photographer now.”

“Nut Rocker” was, of course,
a smash hit, but Kim did no
more B Bumble records - “greed
came into it - everybody wanted
a piece of the record.”

His next group was The Rivingtons, a
black quartet for whom he produced “Papa
Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s The
Word”, which a white group, The
Trashmen, later turned into
“Surfin’ Bird”.

“The Rivingtons had originally
been The Sharps on the Guyden label -
they were Lee Hazlewood’s favourite
black group, and he used them on
Duane Eddy’s records. Hazlewood
taught a lot of people, including Spector,
but he never gets any credit for it.”

Fowley then had a succession of flops
with surfing records: “I never could get

IBT

Good
dean fun

Fowley on CD...

KIM FOWLEY

OUTRAGEOUS

IMPERIAL RECORDS,1968
Fowley’s third - and best -
opens with career resume, “Animal
Man”: “/’m ugly, dirty, filthy ...”Contains
guitar riffs (“Nightrider”), funky
instrumentals (“Hide & Seek”) and
questionable foreign accents
(“Chinese Water Torture”). Sonic Youth
covered “Bubblegum” in 1986 .

IKIM FOWLEY
GOOD CLEAN FUN

IMPERIAL RECORDS, 1969
A mix of comedy and
rock’n’roll, notable for strong
collaborator quotient, including
Rodney Bingenheimer, Warren Zevon,
assorted Bonzos and “Jerry Landis”, aka
Paul Simon. Highlight: poignant Zevon
composition, “I’m Not Young Anymore”.

GENE VINCENT

I’M BACK AND I’M PROUD

DANDELION,1969
Recorded for John Peel’s
Dandelion label, Vincent’s country-
flavoured comeback album featured
Fowley associates former Byrd Skip
Battin and Steppenwolf’s Mars Bonfire,
as well as Red Rhodes and Jim Gordon.

KIM FOWLEY
THE DAY THE EARTH
STOOD STILL mnw,i97o

Made while Fowley was
living in Sweden, The Day..

moves through freaky psych-blues-rock
to experimental passages reminiscent
of early Zappa. Highlight: associative,
freeform epic “Is America Dead?”.

IKIM FOWLEY
INTERNATIONAL HEROES

CAPITOL RECORDS, 1973
Despite outward signs of
glam - Fowley in eye makeup, lipstick,
a fur coat and a T-shirt reading “Space
Age” - International Heroes is relatively
straightforward: “Something New” is a
Dylanesque jangle, while “Dancing All
Night” channels the Stones.

iTHE RUNAWAYS
THE RUNAWAYS

MERCURY, 1976

I Fowley gets writing credits
on seven of the lO songs here, including
debut single, the post-glam, pre-punk
“Cherry Bomb”. The Runaways fired
Fowley in 1977; he never quite captured
the Zeitgeist this adroitly again.

MiLnjitEt the modern

LOVERS
r THE ORIGINAL
I MODERN LOVERS

MOHAWK, 1983

Following John Cale’s sessions, Fowley
travelled to Boston to produce
additional demos with The Modern
Lovers in 1972. Fowley later released lO
of these on his Mohawk label. Rougher
than the Cale versions, the best is a
ragged take on “I’m Straight”.

IKIM FOWLEY

DEATH CITY 2012

\ Cut after Fowley’s diagnosis
I with bladder cancer, his
final studio album is understandably
preoccupied with issues of mortality,
filtered through Fowley’s particular
vision: the title song, “Dead Men Don’t
Have Sex” and “Kim Vincent Fowley”.

Below: The
Rivingtons,
1965

* p °PstcLes

a surf hit... I made creative surfing records. But I had a hit in
England with a song called ‘Surfers Rule’, by an English
surfing group called The Rituals.”

Hitch-hiking around California one day, as is still his wont,
he was given a lift by a young writer named David Gates,
who sang them a tune he’d just written. It was called

‘Popsicles And Icicles’, and Kim swiftly put together a
girl-group called The Murmaids to sing it. He even
formed a new label, Chattahoochee, of which he
owned half. The Murmaids were Terri and
Carol Fisher and Sally Gordon, and the idea
for the sound came from Candice Bergen: “I
was dating her at the time, and she told me
that the sound of Shelley Fabares’ ‘Johnny
Angel’ could be done over and over again in
different varieties. She chose ‘Nut Rocker’, in
fact - she should have been a record producer
instead of a movie star, because she always had
a real good ear for dogcrap rock’n’roll.”
Chattahoochee had a No 1 with “Popsicles”, a
smaller hit with their follow-up “Heartbreak
Ahead”, and then released “about a thousand
records in two years”. ©

m

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 61

GILLES PETARD COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

© In 1963, he came to England - “out of historical
curiosity, to find out what The Beatles meant. I was
like those people who went to the Spanish Civil War
in the Hemingway era, sitting on the hillside with
their picnic baskets, watching battles.”

In London, he met up with an old friend from
California: PJ Proby, then at his peak of popularity.

“We lived together and had a good time... as long as I
was with him he was magical. I was a kind of stabiliser for
him, but when I left his pants split and all those
problems started.”

Back in the USA, he became a dancer with a
troupe known as Vito And The Hands - “We
were the dancing equivalent of Timothy Leary.

This was in ’65, and I also met Dylan then. We
jammed together and he said, ‘Why don’t
you make records?’ I took him at his word,
but I recorded some real off-the-wall crap that
no-one wanted.

In ’66, he appeared on the first Mothers Of
Invention LP, Freak Out!, and performed with
them at the Whisky and the Cafe A Go Go, where
“The Fugs came in... we had this doll that I
smashed up onstage in a pile of garbage. There
was a Mothers ‘Live At The Whisky’ album, too,
but it never came out.”

He came back to Britain again, and a period of
intense recording activity ensued.

In just a few months, he recorded Slade (then known
as The ’N Betweens - “same guys, same sound, no
hits”), Family, Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi, the Soft
Machine (“Feelin’ Reelin’ Squeelin’”, the B-side of
their first record, Polydor single “Love Makes Sweet
Music”), and dozens of other assorted artists.

In ’67, he was back in the States, opening a House
For Homeless Groups in LA.

**t**on

valentine

WIGWAM

“We had dozens of drummers and lead guitarists. Then
one day a bass-player came in, and everyone applauded for
10 minutes. Jim Morrison slept there. Three Dog Night got
together there, Steppenwolf came by and rehearsed, getting
it together for the ‘Born To Be Wild’ era. Then the love-ins
started, and I became the MC at all the Flower Contests.”

He also started working for Liberty/Imperial, and with the
help of a girl friend he discovered Johnny Winter, playing at
the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin, Texas. The result was
what Kim says is still Winter’s only gold album, Progressive
Blues Experiment

“Also I was producing The Seeds, with Sky Saxon. On
‘Wild Blood’ and ‘Falling Off The Edge Of My Mind’ I stood
next to Sky and gave him the lyrics. They’d bring his voice
up on the tape and take mine right down. I also sang on
Fraternity Of Man’s ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’.”

In ’69, he produced Gene Vincent’s Em Back And Em Proud
LP for Dandelion, which led to his appointment as MC and
consultant for the Toronto Rock Festival - “Live Peace In
Toronto”, and Little Richard concert film Keep On Rockin’.

“Then I went to Finland and produced the immortal
Wigwam [second album, Tombstone Valentine, 1970], which
Lester Bangs said was as good as Abbey Road, but nobody
bought it. I went to an island in Sweden, and sat in a black
room, thinking dark thoughts.”

In 1970 he reappeared in Hollywood: “I went to fight for
The Byrds for the three albums - Untitled, Byrdmaniax, and
Farther Along. I had songs on all those albums, and there’s
some stuff they haven’t put out yet. I also worked on Skip’s
solo album for Signpost Records - that’ll be out here soon.
Plus I wrote some songs for the Sir Douglas Quintet, for the
movie Cisco Pike - and I became Leo Kottke’s lyricist for the
Mudlark album.”

A few months ago, Kim made his return to public
performance in America, with a Capitol album called
Em Bad and a tour. “I know how to be a performer,”
he says. “All the time I was making records, I was
playing - six sets a night at the Topanga Canyon
Corral... and if you didn’t play it right, the local
bikers beat you up in the parking lot outside.

That’s as hard as the Star-Club, you know.

“So I’m real good -1 have stage presence, I’m six
foot five inches, I move like Nureyev and Astaire on
an electronic level. I was in at the beginning playing
California rock’n’roll, so I know all the tricks in the
book, Jack.

“Hey, I’ll tell you the story about how I got on Capitol.
I’m not supposed to, but here it is: Alice Cooper had
a party, and he said ‘Kim, you’re the next one to make
it. You’re the next star in that area.’ He said I should
get a band and go out and play... I said no, I’d rather
write songs. So he suggested that I contacted his
producer, Bob Ezrin.

“So Ezrin came to LA, and I played him some songs.
He ordered a couple of dubs and asked me if I had any
other ideas. I said yeah, what about Alice Cooper for
President? Right about election time you should have
this song about Alice being elected, like a kind of
Wild In The Streets on record.

“He said, ‘Thank you, that’s not a bad idea. I’m
gonna help you out - you’ll be hearing from me.’
About two days later, Capitol called me up and said
they’d been talking to Ezrin. So I went round there and
danced on the office desk and lip-synched to a couple of
demos, and they said, ‘You’ve got it - you’re a Capitol
recording artist.’

“So we did the sessions, and right at the end I got a call
from Ezrin. He said, ‘We’re straight’. Whaddya-mean? ‘Well,
I took the Alice for President thing and now it’s gonna be
called ‘Elected’, as a follow-up to ‘School’s Out’. A lot of
people said that was a brilliant pop record, and it came from
my brain, yet I’m not even acknowledged to be alive. My

0

62 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

9

I

feelings were sorta hurt - Pd rather have taken a quarter of
the writing royalties and had my name on it, than have a
boring sort of LP on Capitol that they’ll never release here.

“Actually, the album’s pretty violent, there’s not one
slow song, and they’re all about love-making. We have
Pete Sears, Drachen Theaker, and Mars Bonfire on
rhythm guitar.”

But among his current preoccupations is Flash Cadillac
& The Continental Kids, reputedly the very last word in
greasy rock recreators, whose album he’s just produced for
CBS. “They’ll take Britain by storm. We did ‘Endless Sleep’,
‘Pipeline’, and ‘Crying In The Rain’ - it’s a cross between
punk-rock, schlock-rock, rockabilly, and rock’n’roll.

It’s not Rock Music. For a start, they’re the only revival
band who use the recording techniques of the ’50s. We
cut it at Gold Star in LA, with that great Gold Star echo,
and Stan Ross engineered it - he did ‘Tequila’, Eddie
Cochran, all those things. He’s got 180 gold records.

And we did it in MONO!

“It was as decadent as any modern session - we had
naked girls dancing to the music, and beer thrown around.

I’d say, ‘Sing, you miserable
bastards’, and they’d laugh
and give me the finger.

So I’d say again, ‘Sing,
you miserable bastards’ -
because that’s how I
produce records - and
they’d throw food at me.
Then a naked girl would
appear and start dancing,
and they’d sing... it’s a very
interesting album.

“So here I am in London...
I’m going to write some
songs with Ian Hunter,
Silverhead and The Flamin’
Groovies came by, Jonathan
King called up, I’m writing
with Kerry Scott, who’s Irish and will be a star, and I’m...

“I have millions of dollars from all this crap, of course, so
to any future Beatles, this is your man. I would say that I’m
the most phenomenal man in the record business, so girls -
and gay boys - take a look at this pretty face! I’m just sitting
here, and I’m so available it’s ridiculous. I’m so available
that no-one’s interested!

“Anymore ‘questions’?

Yes. What about...

“The music should speak for itself - we should spend
more time on the music, and less on the people who make it.
That’s why Jonathan King makes sense, because he makes
records without artists. Artists aren’t needed -1 think we

“The
16 -traclc
studio has
become the
heroin
needle of
the record
industry”

iMIMHKC

1 HAVE POLIO,
VERTIGO AND
THE PENIS OF
DEATH...”

Fowley on the
rampage in 2012...

The Runaways with
Fowley (seated) in LA,
1975 : (l-r) Joan Jett,
(original bassist) Peggy
Foster,SandyWest,
Cherie Currie and
Lita Ford

K IM FOWLEY is 72,
but you wouldn’t
know it from the way
he talks, or what he talks
about. We’re discussing his new book
of autobiographical prose and poetry,
Lord Of Garbage, but he’s soon riffing
endlessly about just about anything -
cancer and polio, the shape of his penis
(“Big, with a head like a mushroom”),
the best unsigned band in Newcastle
(Lyxx) and his plans to make an answer
to The Runaways, the 2010 film about
the girl band he managed to stardom
in thel970s.

He has recently had an operation for
bladder cancer, but that hasn’t slowed
him down in the slightest. He has seven
films coming out this year, he boasts,
along with a couple of albums. He’s also
promoting Lord Of Garbage.

11 Lord Of Garbage is a book that is
poetry in motion and prose that glows
in the dark,” he says. “It’s in the form of
a diary exercise. It’s the poetry I wrote
when I was younger, and now I look
back at 72 and explain to the reader
what I was doing in my life at the time,
whether it was crime, punishment,
stardom, madness or disease.” Fowley,
he boasts, holds nothing back. “This is
the book Iggy Pop would write, the one
Leonard Cohen should have written.”

Fowley began writing poetry in 1957 ,
“the best year in rock’n’roll, and also
the year I got polio for the second time.
My polio came back as post-polio
syndrome when I was 50, then I got

bladder cancer in 2010.1 began to write
the book for Kicks Books, who also run
Norton Records, while undergoing
treatment. They stick needles and
cameras down the penis hole and dig
the tumour away. They do that every six
months for five years. So I have polio,
positional vertigo and the penis of
death, but still get more done than
most people. I go in the hospital and
am on morphine with bladder bags and
blood and pus everywhere, and get on
the phone to the voicemail of Kicks and
rattle away.”

It’s an unusual method, but a
productive one; Fowley has produced
three volumes of his unorthodox
memoir. “I overwrote, but everything
I do is over-the-top,” he admits. The
title of the book comes from a song on
Fowley’s cult 1968 Outrageous album,
“Up, Caught In The Middle, Down”.
“Garbage means filth, sleaze, pain,
horror and suffering. Somebody has to
be the cheerleader for those emotions,
so why not Kim Fowley, the ultimate
man? I’m the only author I know who
can do prose, poetry, fuck like a dog,
incite a riot and write a song that will
either make you drink a beer, have an
orgasm or smile.”

PETER WATTS

Originally published in Uncut,

Take 182 ; July 2072

who The Hollywood Argyles or The Murmaids
were; they didn’t know about Chairman Mao or
Ezra Pound or cybernetics or Gestalt therapy - but
those two minutes and 18 seconds meant a lot.

“I totally agree with the Back To Mono
movement. The human side of the record business
was more in evidence when there wasn’t a
technical crutch to fall back on.

“The 16-track studio has become the heroin
needle of the record industry. I’m not against
dope, kids, but it’s overrated, just like rock
intellectualising and 16-track studios. I tell you,
the only new group that real did it for me were the
droogs in A Clockwork Orange, I thought, ‘There
are the new Beatles, they should have a record
out.’ Obviously Alice Cooper thought so, too.”

should have a time of faceless people making wonderful
records, like it used to be. I mean, the only reason
you bothered to come was that I made great
faceless records. No-one then was interested in

T HE PHONE RANG. It was the lady who’d run
off with Alice’s band the night before. With
lavish promises that he’d get her picture in
the MM, Kim lured her back with a tremendous
display of persuasion. “Wow,” he said, putting the
phone down, “Women’s Lib would have me on a
meat-rack for that conversation.”

The lady duly arrived, and was everything Kim
had described. His nose now running like mad into
the tissues, he and she went to get changed for the
picture session.

They reappeared, she in hot pants and Grand
Canyon-like decolletage, he in green make-up,
brandishing a giant whip.

“I’m the only honest one you’ve met, I guess. It’s
easy... I’ve got nothing to lose.”

I confess that I blushed. © Richard williams

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 63

GETTY IMAGES

LORD YATESBURY CD

Trip Advizer collects together 16 songs from the
last decade-and-a-half of the Archdrude’s musi¬
cal career. The songs have mainly been culled
from Cope’s past 7 albums but also includes
a couple of concert favourites - ‘Conspiracy
Blues’ & ‘Julian In The Underworld’

STONE JACK JONES

PUBLIC SERVICE (!■ ROAD CAST I HQ
THE RACE fOfl SPACE

PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING

TEST CARD RECORDINGS LP/CD
London duo’s eagerly anticipated 2nd album fea¬
tures the singles ‘Gagarin’ & ‘Go!’ “They blend the
voices of the past with the music of the present to
astounding effect” (The Independent) “Adrenalised
post-rock & electronics... Gripping” (MOJO)

EVANS THE DEATH

ERIC CHEN AUX

mummi the

made a coast ql iti? thE down wears us like jewelry
the pun powder's all aver mt like preen light jar thin
ice % plum all old and rose? summer lighter Eng’s
ml its hanks in itie stuck he r e tr an aid crab tree
my favourile hat is your drinking glass bitter and
twisted golden spring its riches fifty blue ghosts
of a heart blue bird the darkest fruit is ruby a
real sku lisp litter to get us through the winter a
real skullsplitter to get ns through the winter

ERIC CHENAUX

CONSTELLATION LP/CD

“An effortlessly lovely solo set that recalls
John Martyn and Arthur Russell’s woozily
luminous songs weave trippily between
improv jazz, electronica, folk-drone and
lounge balladry.”

8/10 UNCUT

WILL BUTLER

IN TALL BUILDINGS

WESTERN VINYL LP/CD

Solo album by member of Wild Belle, N0M0,
and His Name Is Alive, which
Stereogum called “a serene pop
soundscape where gut-trusting simplicity
and thoughtful modification intersect.”

ATAKAK

WESTERN VINYL LP/CD

Features Kurt Wagner (Lambchop) and Patty
Griffin. The Times said Ancestor is
“beautifully desolate.. .wouldn’t sound
out of place on the soundtrack for True
Detective.”

FORTUNA POP! LP/CD

More expressive, heavier & experimental
than their debut, Expect Delays bristles
with an underlying tension & veers from
rip-roaring noise to quiet contemplation,
underpinned by Katherine Whitaker’s
extraordinary voice.

MERGE RECORDS LP/CD

“A burnished gem that shares musical DNA
with not only his main band [Arcade Fire],
but also the Violent Femmes,
Television, and Arthur Russell.”

- Boston Globe

AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA LP / CD

Ghanaian disco-rap-highlife hero Ata Kak’s
1994 tape “Obaa Sima” is remastered and
issued on vinyl for the first time, after an
8-year search for the mysterious artist
behind this one-of-a-kind recording.

CRITICAL HEIGHTS LP/CD

Pulsating debut album with the cathartic
energy of Husker Du and the post punk
angularity of Joy Division and Mission of
Burma; urgent and raw.

FYSISKFORMAT LP/CD

Haust’s fourth album Bodies flashes a
renewed and reworked band, expanding
their black-metal/punk hybrid with elements
of psychedelia, hypnotic noise rock and a
ghostly sense of melody.

DAMAGED GOODS LP/CD

London’s punky Skiffle kings, reminds us of
later Clash, Gorillaz etc.

Big support from Imelda May, BBC 6MUSIC
& XFM.

PLANET MU CD

First time on CD for p-Ziq’s joyous and
nostalgic vinyl-only EPs Rediffusion and
XTEP combined here with exclusive track
‘Forger’ as XTLP. Welcome back p-Ziq!

AN AMALGAMATION OF RECORD SHOPS AND LABELS DEDICATED TO BRINGING YOU NEW MUSIC

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UNCUT

OUR SCORING SYSTEM:

lO Masterpiece 9 Essential 8 Excellent
7 Very good6 Good but uneven
4-5 Mediocre 1-5 Poor

New albums

THIS MONTH: MARK KNOPFLER | LAURA MARLING | BJORK & MORE

TRACKLIST

1 Primrose Green _

2 Summer Dress _

5 Same Minds _

4 Griffiths Bucks Blues _

5 Love Can Be Cruel _

6 On The Banks Of The Old Kishwaukee

7 Sweet Satisfaction _

8 The High Road _

9 All Kinds Of You _

10 Hide In The Roses

RYLEY WALKER

Primrose Green

DEADOCEANS

Questing Chicagoan takes things further on restless,
eclectic second. By John Robinson

In some ways, it’s a perfect representation of the
artist - Walker’s new album crests warm currents
of jazz, folk and rock as, say, Van Morrison or Tim
Buckley did in the period. In others, it’s slightly
misleading. While Walker has absorbed these
admirably free-roaming influences, this is clearly
someone reaching for their essence, on a mission
to follow a philosophy rather than to slavishly
recreate a mood. A musician whose formative
years were spent playing noise in basements
rather than perfecting his hammering-on
in drop D tuning, there’s a sense that this \

record represents a snapshot of a restless /

9/10

IF YOU THOUGHT that the last
word in folky period detail was
offered by the Coen brothers in
Inside Llewyn Davis, then you’ll be fascinated by
Chicago’s Ryley Walker. On the cover of his debut
album for Tompkins Square, 2014’s agreeably
low-key All Kinds Of You, the 25-year-old stood
smoking a cigarette outside a warehouse, guitar
case at his side - the image of the Phil Ochs-style
workingman troubadour. On his great second
album, he’s pictured in dappled sunlight holding
wild flowers, very much the early 1970s Elektra
artist, as styled by William S Harvey.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 65

Walker: bucolic charms,
evolving creativity

New Albums

\ artist in flux, an evolving creativity. Things

/ weren’t like this last year, and seem highly
unlikely to be like this next.

Walker is an appealing character to sign up
with. A man able to hold his own among the
current wave of instrumental solo guitar
performers like Daniel Bachman (with
whom he has collaborated), folk
guitar is something he loves, but not
unreservedly. His wry observation of
a scene where guitarists play “with
lamps on stage”, casts him as an
irreverent, unclubbable character
in a world which has its anointed,
unchanging gods. A comment he made
on Twitter (“John Fahey still awful jack
rose still God”) brought comment from
nearly every working guitarist in his
field (Nathan Bowles, Cian Nugent,

Chris Forsyth and William Tyler),
approving or otherwise, as near as any
of them are likely to get to a chorus. The
other day, he posted a supportive email
apparently from John Renbourn, “The more
I drink,” the elder statesman bibulously
professed, “the smoker I get to enjoying you...”

Renbourn’s support tells its own story.

A highly technical player in his own self-
articulated field of medieval folk, some of
Renbourn’s best 1960s albums found him in folk/
jazz after-hours conversation with another pole
star for Ryley Walker: Bert Jansch. Jansch’s
influence is maybe a little less pronounced on
Primrose Green than it was on his superb 2013
single “The West Wind”, where the influence
could be read as much in Walker’s diffident
delivery and his bucolic subject (mentioned:
sparrows) as in his virtuosic guitar. Live
performances of the tune found Walker pushing
at its boundaries, finding unexpectedly noisy
seams to mine within it.

As it turns out, that seems a signpost to
Primrose Green , an album in which some courtly
formality remains, but as a jumping-off point for
more freewheeling development. The album is
parenthesised by the bucolic charms of the title
track and its sister, the closing “Hide In The

' it'

>* Produced by:

Cooper Crain
Recorded at: Minbal
Studio, Chicago
Personnel includes:
Brian Sulpizio (guitar),
Ben Boye (piano,
harmonium), Fred
Lonberg-Holm,

(cello), Frank Rosaly
(drums), Anton
Hatwich (double bass)

THE

ROAD TO...

PRIMROSE

GREEN

Walker’s cohorts in
questing folk guitar

BERT JANSCH

LA Turnaround

CHARISMA,1974
Transatlantic by nature, if
not by label, this is one of
Jansch s finest. Recorded in
LA, and the UK home of Tony
Stratton-Smith, producer
Mike Nesmith drafted in
crack US session men like
Red Rhodes. Bert, as ever,
supplied the chops and the
courtly backbone.

9/10

PENTANGLE

Basket Of Light

TRANSATLANTIC, 1969
The interplay of folk and jazz
styles that Jansch and John
Renbourn brought to Bert
And John here took flight
in a band setting. “Sally Go
Round The Roses” and “The
Cuckoo” are particularly nice
pointers to Walker’s coming
mode. Jacqui McShee’s voice
is a bit much at times, though.

7/10

TIM BUCKLEY

Greetings From LA

ELEKTRA,1972

The funky and sexy Buckley
wasn’t to the taste of every
folkie. Still, the free-flowing
troubadour of Happy Sad was
present and correct, even
among the tight rhythms and
gospel singers. Posthumous
live LP Honeyman indicated
how much further Buckley
could push things in concert.

8/10

VAN MORRISON

It's Too Late To Stop

NOW WARNERS, 1974
Rightly regarded as one
of the great live albums,
here Van and his Celtic Soul
Orchestra are caught on
West Coast and UK dates,
spectacularly re-invigorating
favourites from his catalogue
and extended jams on blues
classics. “Warm Love” about
covers the mood of the thinq.

9/10

66 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

Roses”, which ends the album on much the same
note, though what takes place between them
travels far and wide.

Wonderfully arranged, the album begins with
Walker’s acoustic guitar joined by Danny
Thompson-like double bass and snaky electric
guitar. Encouraging the idea of rural retreat as
analogy for lightly psychedelic away-break,
Walker sings “ Primrose Green, makes me high-
high-high...”bxeaking with formal structure and
launching the album’s wider trip. “Summer
Dress”, with its sea-worthy gait and clavinet
interventions, takes things further from terra
firma, hitting on a simple lyrical idea much as
Tim Buckley might, and encouraging it to give
up all it can, over a rolling, jazzy funk.

The truly standout tracks on the album, like
“Same Minds”, which follows, manage to hold
both of these elements in position, retaining the
best of both. Namely, a crisp sense of formal
order, into which improvisation is poured until
it looks like it might spill over the sides. “Same
Minds” begins with a simple, trilling acoustic
key change, but Walker takes it much further
than it ever looked likely to go. “We’vegot the
same heart,” he sings, investing the line with
everything he has. “We’vegot the same
minds...” Like the later “Sweet Satisfaction”,
(which brings John Martyn into the mix in
its management of order and mounting
emotional chaos), it’s spectacular, revealing
the West Coast of the mind the album has been
hinting at: the intersection of LA Turnaround
and Greetings From LA.

Walker says that parts of the album were
wholly improvised, and “All Kinds Of You”, late
in the album, seems a likely beneficiary of that
policy. An electric roam through the city at night,
Herbie Hancock joining The Doors, its lyric is
minimal, but is delivered with such passion, it’s
stretched nearly to breaking point under the
weight it’s carrying. “Love Can Be Cruel”, in
which John Renbourn guests on Miles Davis’

Get Up With It, is another free-radical. If the
words don’t quite catch as well as you might
hope, the song’s medieval science fiction gains
additional texture at the close, where a J Mascis-
like guitar buzz glowers over a pretty, Knights Of
The Jaguar digital sequence.

Primrose Green is disorientating, casting new
light on modes you thought you knew well.
Wherever there are familiar elements, Walker
and his excellent, jazzy band take them to new
places. “The High Road” has something of Nick
Drake’s “At The Chime Of The City Clock” about
it, with its strings and restless feel, but it seems
characteristic that even when he’s on the road
(“Not a penny to my name...”), that romantic,
metaphoric route of the questing beat or folkie,
Walker wants to take things further. Rather than
progressing to a chorus, the song keeps drifting
on, returning only to the road, friendless,
besieged by wild dogs and memories of the past.

Eventually, though, Primrose Green does
come to rest, with the unadorned acoustic
playing of “Hide In The Roses”, Walker taking
us back to something like the simple statement
with which he started the album. It’s like
returning home after a long journey away. Glad
in some ways to be back, but irrevocably
changed for the better by the experience.

QF3A

Ryley Walker: “I want
to sing the way John
Coltrane plays sax...”

ELL ME A BIT about the writing of
Primrose Green. It’s a pretty open-
ended, wide-roaming kind of record.

It comes from a lot of jamming. The band
are heavy jazz dudes in Chicago. The songs are
like riffs, we play ’em live and we improvise. It’s
all built from improvisation, it’s immediate in the
songs. It came together very quickly.

Who is on the record, and how do you know
them? They’re phenomenal musicians and some
of my best friends. The electric guitar player
Brian Sulpizio is my roommate and my best
friend in the world - he has a Jerry Garcia meets
Django Reinhardt sort of style, it’s super-far-out
but super-in at the same time, you know? Ben
Boye, who plays the keys, is one of the most
brilliant musicians - he plays with Bonnie
“Prince” Billy, loads of other people. Anton
Hatwich plays bass, he’s like a Chicago god of
stand-up bass. Frank Rosaly plays drums, a very
in-demand jazz guy.

How do you fit in that world as an acoustic
guitar guy? I don’t want some wussy-ass indie
rock people playing with me. I want jazz guys.
Chicago’s a really collaborative town, you play
folk tunes, but my friends are in the jazz scene so
I’ll play with them. All my favourite records have
that: Pentangle, Tim Buckley, it’s people playing
with heavy-duty jazz people. Every night the
tune is different. With this kind of band, you can
take a different path with it each time.

How did the writing work? I had a record out
last year and I had a goal of when I went out to
not play any of the songs on that record, just new
stuff. I would sit backstage drinking a beer and
smoking a doobie and come
up with something, and
say, that’s a new song, let’s
play that tonight. Each
night it kept growing. A
song is an organic thing, it
needs its food and its love -
if you raise that shit and if
you nurture it, it keeps
growing and growing.

All the songs on the record
are pretty much first take.

The whole record we made
it and mixed it in about
two days.

How did that tour go? Nobody
knows me, so it wasn’t like people are
going, “Come on man, you didn’t play
‘Stairway’?” No-one was super pissed
off or anything. For me, it’s really
therapeutic. I like to try new things,
keep it interesting.

“Same Minds” is a great track. Did
that come about the same way?

Oh, totally. You know Cian Nugent? We
were on tour in the States last March.

He’s a classic Irish dude, like, what the
fuck is he doing in the Deep South.

No-one’s coming to the shows, we’re
bombing every night. We’re just getting
hammered before the gig and nobody’s

coming. He’s like, “What the fock am I doing?”
Every night we’d be in some shitty motel next
to truckers doing speed and jam every night.

That came out of us jamming in a hotel, doing
nothing, just playing. I really like that song.

Your voice is more of an instrument on this
record... I’m obsessed with John Martyn and
people like that. It’s really important to write
words on paper, but the voice is another
instrument, I want to sing the way that John
Coltrane plays sax. I don’t want to sing in a
monotone vein.

You used to play noise - what was your
eureka moment for this kind of thing?

I played noise when I moved to Chicago
when I was 17.1 played fingerstyle guitar
growing up and listening to Zeppelin and
The Beatles and shit, I was doing the two
concurrently. The noise and punk people were
like, “You should play your song stuff live.” A lot
of my support today comes from those people
and that’s where I got my chops, doing that,
playing non-stop.

What’s your relationship with the greats of
this period? John Martyn, Tim Buckley, Van...
they’re huge, they’re folk musicians but they
reached super-far. They weren’t just playing post¬
war blues, they reached far into jazz and Indian
music and far-out stuff. They were songwriters
but pushing it super-hard. I’m moved by that
passion, how they reached so far. Then in the UK
people like Bert and Wizz Jones and John Martyn
- those people were super-far-out and into all
sorts of music.

You got a funny email from Bert’s pal, John
Renbourn... I played a show with him last
summer, in this festival outside Birmingham in
the UK - in Nick Drake’s home town. I met him
backstage and he turned out to be the coolest guy
in the fucking world, “Oh yeah, how’re you
doing?” He parties super-hard. I got his email
and sent him my new song with a gushing email
like ‘I owe you everything, man’. He got back, “I
was going to send you an insulting drunk email
but I kind of liked it...”

“I never want to get
a goddamn job
again, just
concentrate on
playing guitar”

Where are you headed
next? I’m already writing
stuff for the next record -
I think it’ll keep evolving.
I think the new songs are
gaining in confidence.

I never want to get a
goddamn job again,
just concentrate on
playing guitar.

INTERVIEW: IOHN ROBINSON

New Albums

COURTNEY BARNETT

And Sometimes I Just Sit

MARATHON ARTISTS

Melbourne’s slacker queen toughens up on expansive
full-length debut. By Tom Pinnock

TRACKLIST

1

Elevator Operator

2

Pedestrian At Best

3

An Illustration Of Loneliness
(Sleepless In NY)

4

Small Poppies

5

DePreston

6

Aqua Profunda!

7

Dead Fox

8

Nobody Really Cares If You

Don’t Go To The Party

9

Debbie Downer

IO

Kim’s Caravan

11

Boxinq Day Blues

o #1 /\ WAS WALKING down Sunset

Q* Strip” Courtney Barnett sings on

“Kim’s Caravan”, the epic, noisy
centrepiece of her debut album. A moment later,
though, comes a wry clarification. “Phillip Island,
not Los Angeles.. .”

This reference to the tourist hotspot near
Melbourne is a relief; a sign that, despite the weight
of worldwide acclaim on her shoulders, Barnett is
still very much in touch with the Australian suburbs
that have inspired her exceptional songs.

The best tracks on her first two EPs, compiled as
2013’s The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, were
glorious confections of alternative guitar rock, lazy

sprechgesang vocals and artful lyrics, at once funny
and deeply poignant. “Avant Gardener” was the
‘hit’, a true tale of Barnett suffering anaphylactic
shock while trying to clear her yard, set to a
charmingly repetitive groove studded with
spacey guitars.

There are no humorous songs about falling ill
while gardening here - although we do get a
humorous song about falling ill in the pool while
trying to hold your breath to impress a fellow
swimmer. The track in question, two-minute sugar-
rush “Aqua Profunda!”, is punchier than most of
Barnett’s previous work, setting a pattern for the
majority of Sometimes.... The sprightly “Debbie

68 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

Q.SA

Courtney Barnett

H ow was the recording process
for Sometimes...?

We didn’t do too many overdubs,
we didn’t fuck around too much. I think it
took lO days, I didn’t really wanna spend
too much longer than that. You find
yourself getting a bit too fussy, a bit too
serious about it.

Have you been very concerned with
ecological matters recently?

These kind of things always have been on
my mind, but I think in the last year it’s just
kind of amplified a bit. I guess a lot of the
time I’ve been writing and in my downtime,
it’s just been playing on my mind a bit more
maybe than usual. “Kim’s Caravan” is just
about the helplessness of those situations.

Did you consciously try not to write songs
about touring the world?

I wrote these songs between the second EP
and last April. It wasn’t so much that I was
trying to avoid those things, though we’d
played America and Europe, but it was just
that our three-month tour hadn’t happened
yet! A lot of the stuff I’ve written since then
has probably been about those kind of
places or people I’ve met when I’m
travelling around. I write about what I do
and see, so there’s no point trying to not
talk about it. INTERVIEW: TOMPINNOCK

Downer” could spring right from the early ’90s,
organ and guitar seesawing over a baggy-ish
beat, while “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go
To The Party” and “Dead Fox” move away from
The Double EP’s more laidback, slacker-esque
grooves to jaunty, poppy textures
that are more Britpop in nature.

Sometimes... is not all three-minute
garage-pop, though; some songs
plough a grungier furrow, with
Barnett, toughened up by a year
of performing live in a loud trio
format, channeling Mudhoney on
the stomping “Pedestrian At Best”
and closing thrilling, Pavement-
esque waltz “Small Poppies” with
a storm of ragged soloing.

With this artist, the music is
really only half the story, though.

Australian songwriters such as The
Go-Betweens, Darren Hanlon, You
Am I and The Lucksmiths, to name just a handful,
have long mined similar lyrical seams, telling
stories laced with black humour and poignancy;
and Barnett, surpassing the global notoriety of
these, is easily their peer. Her narrative skills
position many of the tracks here closer to short
stories than songs; take opener “Elevator Operator”,
apparently about a suicidal commuter drone, until
a twist in the tale opens up the song’s horizons,

Produced by:

Dan Luscombe and
Burke Reid
Recorded at: Head
Gap, Melbourne
Personnel: Courtney
Barnett (vocals, guitar),
Bones Sloane (bass),
Dave Mudie (drums),
Dan Luscombe (guitar)

literally - it turns out the guy’s just checking
out the view from the roof of a building so he
can pretend he’s “playing SimCity”.

At other moments, Barnett is increasingly
impressionistic with her imagery, writing less
about herself and more about the world as she
sees it. On “Dead Fox”, she dreamily weaves
together vignettes on organic fruit and
vegetables, truckers’ dangerous driving and
whether cars should be locked up in zoos
instead of animals, until these disparate topics
fold together with a beautiful sense of logic. “A
possum Jackson Pollock painted on the tar” is
her most gloriously kaleidoscopic line.

The seven-minute-long “Kim’s Caravan”
continues these ecologically driven themes
over an atmospheric slow-build not dissimilar
to Neil Young’s “Down By The River”. “ The
Great Barrier Reefy it ain't so
great anymore/It’s been raped
beyond belief the dredgers treat
it like a whore...” Barnett
murmurs, as an ominous bass
riff is joined by echoed guitars
on the edge of feedback.
Highlights like this, and the
caustic “Pedestrian At Best”,
suggest that the possibility of
her pursuing more extended
and out-there ideas in the future
is an exciting prospect.

With such engaging and well¬
loved songs as “Avant Gardener”
and “History Eraser” in her back
catalogue, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And
Sometimes I Just Sit could in theory have been a
tough follow-up. And yet Courtney Barnett has
managed to expand her lyrical preoccupations
and musical interests outwards and upwards,
while still retaining the magic of her past peaks.
In such skilful hands as hers, it seems, even an
album about touring the world and becoming
rich might not be something to fear, after all.

p70 MARKKNOPFLER
p71 MARC ALMOND
p72 JOHNNY DOWD
p74 LAURA MARLING
p78 MADONNA
p79 SAM LEE & FRIENDS
p82 MATTHEW E WHITE
P 83 RON SEXSMITH
p85 BJORK

7/10

23 SKIDOO

Beyond Time

LES DISQUES DU CREPUSCULE

First music in 15 years
from industrial
funk pioneers

In 1983,23 Skidoo terrified
a WOMAD crowd with a
performance featuring
caustic tape loops and gamelan drumming on
scrap metal. But the London group were never
simply industrial noisemakers. Drilled on funk,
William Burroughs and martial arts, their best
work blends exotic menace with a Zen-like
composure. Beyond Time is the soundtrack to a
film about sculptor William Turnbull, who also
happens to be the father of Skidoo founder Alex
Turnbull. It’s often closer to the music the group
made during their 2000 comeback - jazzy
breakbeats on “Dawning (Version)”, turntable
scratching and spectral sax on “Interzonal” -
although a retake of 1983’s “Urban Gamelan”
remains a thing of cold dread.

LOUIS PATTISON

ALL WE ARE

All We Are

DOUBLESIX

Multinational trio’s
wholesome disco

Liverpool’s All We Are
describe their music
as “the Bee Gees on
diazepam”, but,
distressing as that sounds, don’t let it put
you off. Hailing from Brazil, Ireland and
Norway - they met at the performing arts
school LIPA - the trio’s tastes converge on
a kind of soporific boogie laced with indie
jangling and creamy falsetto harmonies
that manage to stay the right side of the
yearning/yelping divide. It’s all very tasteful -
“Feel Safe” is vulnerable like The xx’s best
moments, “Something About You” evokes
Souvlaki-era Slowdive - and though, by
the end of the album, you crave some
drama, what you’re left with is actually
pretty serene.

PIERS MARTIN

7/10

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 69

HENRIK HANSEN

THE PROSPECT OF
a new solo album by
Mark Knopfler is one of
nature’s less effective
ways of setting the
pulse racing. Knopfler
is to hype what rain is
to fire. Operating a full
octave below Tow-key’,
by now the primary
8/10 ingredients of his

music - rootsy work¬
outs, bluesy growlers, wry shuffles, country and
Celtic touches - are reassuringly fixed.

There are, however, gradations to his doggedly
unflashy craft. The 2012 double album, Privateering,
was a genial 20-track sprawl through Knopfler’s
arsenal, running wide rather than terribly deep,
leaning heavily on sturdy blues. Tracker, while
never deviating far from established expectations,
possesses a different quality. An album threaded
with themes of transience and ruminations on time
and memory, it’s richly melodic, lyrically involving,
and boasts an unhurried elegance and quiet
intensity which elevates it to the ranks of Knopfler’s
most affecting work.

Befitting an album by a well-read member of
rock’s awkward squad, two of Tracker's highlights
are character studies of literary outsiders. On
“Basil”, which begins in a haze of mandolins before
proceeding towards a stately “Brothers In Arms”
ache, Knopfler summons up the ghost of North-East
modernist poet Basil Bunting - best known for his
1965 epic ‘Briggflatts’ - whom he encountered while
working as copy boy at Newcastle’s Evening
Chronicle. The distance between the pair - one, a
cocky teen with the world at his feet; the other, a
disillusioned poet with compromised ambitions -
is laid out with empathy, Knopfler peppering his
recollections with details of five cigarettes and

MARK

KNOPFLER

Tracker

UNIVERSAL

Dire Straits honcho re-engages on
eighth solo LP. By Graeme Thomson

two silver half-crowns ”, and the
unforgettable triumph of “kissing a
Gateshead girl”.

“Beryl” is a more muscular pen
portrait, revisiting another cornerstone
of Knopfler’s legacy. Having stolen the
intro - three raps on the hi-hat and a
single snare shot - from “Sultans Of
Swing”, it duly pilfers that song’s key,
tempo and stripped down, bar-band
boogie as well. It’s a fitting setting for a
bristling homage to the late Liverpool
writer Beryl Bainbridge, awarded a
posthumous honour by the Booker
Prize committee but unfairly
overlooked while alive, according
to Knopfler, who chides: “It's too late,
ya dabblers, it's all too late”.

If a chippy class warrior still resides
within this 65-year-old multi¬
millionaire, so does an unabashed
music fan. The easy, undemanding
groove of “Broken Bones” nods heavenwards to JJ
Cale, an enduring influence who died in 2013. More
significantly, perhaps, much of Tracker was written
during a period of sustained touring with Bob
Dylan. Though their association dates back to 1979,
Knopfler’s radar remains alert for incoming traffic.
“Lights Of Taormina”, a charmingly weathered
reflection from the Sicilian town, sounds like a
campfire version of “Just Like Tom Thumb Blues”.
“River Towns”, meanwhile, has the steady roll of
latter-day Dylan, and a protagonist “looking in the
mirror at the face that I deserve,” to boot. They’re two

of several excellent, emotive songs
written from the perspective of rootless
men. The elliptical “Silver Eagle”
frames a moment of transient
tenderness recalled from a bus rolling
through America; “Mighty Man”
honours the itinerant escapades of a
scarred Irish navvy, aptly framed by
a reinterpretation of the traditional
standard “She Moved Through The
Fair”; “Wherever I Go”, a graceful
country ballad sung with Ruth Moody
from The Wailin’ Jennys, finds two
souls crossing paths briefly on the
road, their emotional bond undiluted
by physical distance.

It’s serious stuff, but beautifully
realised. There’s room for some nifty
musical footwork on the wryly
nostalgic “Laughs And Jokes And
Drinks And Smokes”, which sounds
like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”
uprooted to some ’baccy-stained folk club. The
incongruous “Skydiver”, meanwhile, is a reminder
that Knopfler knows his pop coordinates. A
Ray Davies-esque study of a carefree gambler, its
nifty descending chord sequences are lit up by
cascading harmonies.

It adds up to a little more than just another solid
Mark Knopfler offering. His eighth solo album
will no doubt satisfy dedicated fans, but for
those lulled into inattentiveness somewhere
along the way, Tracker also makes an excellent
case for re-engagement.

rroaucea oy:

Mark Knopflerand
Guy Fletcher
Recorded at: British
Grove Studios, London
Personnel: Mark
Knopfler (vocals,
guitar, mandolin), Guy
Fletcher (keyboards,
bass, ukulele), Glenn
Worf (bass), Ian Tanto’
Thomas (drums),

John McCusker
(fiddle, cittern), Mike
McGoldrick (whistle,
flute), Phil Cunningham
(accordion), Nigel
Hitchcock (sax), Ruth
Moody (vocals), Tom
Walsh (trumpet), Bruce
Molsky (fiddle)

0,3 A

Mark Knopfler

T here seems to be a real unity of themes
on this record.

It has to do with time and memory, that’s
a big part of it. As you get older, you view time
differently, it becomes more of a reverse
telescope. I also end up here and there with
Northern themes. They’re part of my background
and they do inform the songs.

What prompted you to write about Beryl
Bainbridge and Basil Bunting?

I’d be standing right behind Basil as a copy boy,
and it was clear that he didn’t want to be there.

He was writing ‘Briggflatts’ then, which is a
meditation on time and abandoned love. I was
15 , and at that age the world is a rosy promise,
whereas I think he was seeing it from the other
side. The road ahead was shorter than the one
he left behind. Beryl also had to do with time,
because back then there was an Oxbridge
prejudice. She was self-deprecating, a working-
class Liverpool girl who never went to university.
Maybe she realised how mighty she was, but she
didn’t want to make a thing about it.

How was touring with Dylan?

It definitely helped me produce a couple of
songs: “Lights Of Taormina” and “Silver Eagle”, I
wouldn’t have written that otherwise. I was back
touring on buses again and I started writing from
that perspective. INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON

70 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

7/10

MARC ALMOND

The Velvet
Trail

CHERRY RED

Sparky collaboration
with producer/
songwriter Chris Braide

Almond’s first album of
original material in five
years is a suitably dramatic affair, split into
three acts with recurring themes and interludes.
It’s strong but uneven, the singer’s flair for
grandiose flourishes not always finding
simpatico musical settings. Beth Ditto duet
“When The Comet Comes”, for example,
offers only a string of dodgy celestial puns
set to a sub-SAW dance beat. Almond’s
far more convincing strafing electro-boogie
(“Demon Lover”, “Bad To Me”), neon-lit
melancholy (“Scar”) and blood-red balladry
(“Zipped Black Leather Jacket”), while “Life
In My Own Way” reaffirms his status as a
bedsit Brel nonpareil.

GRAEME THOMSON

BETHIA
BEADMAN

Chinatown

ROSALIE RECORDS

Cinematic third outing
from choirgirl-turned-
Hole keyboardist

8/10 Fame may have so far
- eluded this East London

singer though her story is the stuff that film
scripts are made of, taking in Cambridge
University (where she studied theology and
Sanskrit), singing at the Vatican, and moving
to LA where Courtney Love gave her a job.
Beadman’s latest solo effort, recorded at
Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, comes
with a more sinewy and eclectic sound than
you might expect from an ex-member of Hole.
“Tomorrow”, about the last gasp of an affair,
brims with melodrama - think Lana Del Rey
without the noir-ish artifice - while the warm,
neo-soul of “Still My Baby” is PJ Harvey meets
Scott Walker.

FIONA STURGES

7/10

BIOSPHERE/

DEATHPROD

Stator

TOUCH

Split album of Arctic
tundra ambience

The music of both Geir
Jenssen, aka ‘Arctic
ambient’ pioneer

Biosphere, and Helge Sten, aka Deathprod,
tends toward deep listening. Both of them excel
at icy texturology: listen to classics like
Biosphere’s Substrata, and you’ll think the
temperature in the room has dropped
significantly. Stator is a split release, organised
so you shuttle between the artists, track by
track. Biosphere has a delicate touch, pulsing
and slowly gathering momentum, while
Deathprod goes for waves of noise: see
deathless closer “Optical”. But there’s
something about moving between voices
that doesn’t add up. It’s great music that
doesn’t convince in this format.

JONDALE

OREN
AMBARCHI
AND JIM
O’ROURKE

Behold

EDITIONS MEGO

Avant heavyweights in
drone-dream summit

The second collaboration
between Ambarchi and O’Rourke, more often
found in trio form with inveterate Japanese
guitar legend Keiji Haino, is a beautifully
tricksy document, two side-long abstractions
for deep, mantric structures. The gathering
momentum of “Behold” - in particular,
its second part - will invariably lead to
comparisons with The Necks, but that would
be misleading: Ambarchi and O’Rourke bed
their extended compositions down in richer
tones, with glassing electronic hums and
roiling organs moving on shifting sands,
while Ambarchi’s guitar drops liquid notes
alongside the piece’s hypnotic rhythm.
JONDALE

7/10

DANIEL AVERY

New Energy
[Collect*

Remixes)

PHANTASY

Brit techno’s rising star
shares goodness around

Debut albums seldom merit
a remix album of their very
own, but Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic might be an
exception. Championed by the likes of Andrew
Weatherall and Erol Alkan, Avery’s robust,
synth-fired techno is both pneumatic but
pleasingly malleable, good for club or earbuds.
Two discs hand its contents over to an
international team of remixers. Results veer
towards the stern - witness Perc’s industrial
pummelling of “Reception”, or the nefarious
undercurrent that runs through Silent Servant’s
“Spring 27”. It’s a broad church, though, evinced
by Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve’s take on the
title track, jerky electro-funk which periodically
eases off to let the good vibes flow.

LOUIS PATTISON

REVELATIONS

Marc Almond on his magical
collaboration with Chris Braide

V Following his last album of original
material, 2010’s Variete, Marc Almond wasn’t
sure he’d ever record again. “I felt drained of
inspiration,” he says. “Though very artistically
satisfying, the album had a difficult birth
and I was despondent about the reaction
it received - mostly indifference.” Enter
songwriter/producer Chris Braide (Beyonce,
Lana Del Rey), who out of the blue sent
Almond several backing tracks which “really
fired up my creative muse. Chris tapped into
sounds and chords he knew would excite me.
He wanted to make a record that referenced
the best of Marc Almond, and I embraced
it.” While making the album, the pair never
met, or even spoke. “We communicated by
long emails every day while swapping files of
vocals and music. Chris would write: ‘I see you
singing this track in smoky black eyeliner like
Bolan in a picture from the Futuristic Dragon
period.’ I loved that and got myself into the
role. We went for tea after the album was
finished and thankfully didn’t spoil the magic.”
The result, he says, is “strong and celebratory,
with great beats, chords and choruses: a
fresh, dramatic, modern-sounding pop
record. I could say I won’t need to do another,
but I won’t put myself in that corner again!”
GRAEMETHOMSON

THE BLACK
RYDER

The Door Behind
The Door

THE ANTI-MACHINE MACHINE

Nu-shoegazers trip
the dark fantastic

8/10 Offering black-on-black

- swirls of hypnotic psych

gloom, The Black Ryder’s belated follow-up to
2009’s Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride is a heavy
trip indeed. That may reflect its background -
the band consists of Aussie couple Aimee Nash
and Scott Von Ryper, who divorced since
releasing their debut but still record together,
constructing intricate mini-universes of MBV-
like noise on the brilliant “Let Me Be Your Light”,
or exploring Primal Scream-ish acid-soul on
“Throwing Stones”. The band also do finger¬
picking (“The Going Up Was Worth Coming
Down”) and avant-classical (“Until The Calm
Of Dawn”), uniting disparate sounds through
their dedication to darkness and distress.

PETER WATTS

JAMES
BLACKSHAW

Summoning
Suns

IMPORTANT

First set of vocals from
England’s master of
6/10 guitar fantasia

- English guitarist James

Blackshaw has released a run of lovely,
poised guitar soli albums over the past decade.
Summoning Suns is his long-time-coming,
but seemingly inevitable, album of songs.

His guitar playing sits well in the middle
of each song, and his voice, while understated,
has a certain breathy charm. The songs
themselves hew close to where Jim O’Rourke
was headed with albums like Eureka, but
without the concealed snark of O’Rourke’s
lyrics. And that’s perhaps the problem with
Summoning Suns - it’s edgeless, overly polite,
and arranged within an inch of its life. There’s
little room to move.

JONDALE

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 71

JAIRO ZAVALA

New Albums

JOHNNY DOWD

That’s Your Wife On
The Back Of My Horse

WiMMir

MOTHERJINX

Sixty something veteran gets back in the saddle

Johnny Dowd has never run shy of a little self-mythology. The title
of his latest effort cops a line from Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s 1957
tune, “Gangster Of Love”, in which a no-good cowboy makes off
with the town’s womenfolk on his white steed, taunting the local
8/10 sheriff as he heads for the prairie. “ Around my neck is your mother's

- locket” scowls Dowd, like a man who’s just decided that his is

the only law that counts around here. (( Your sisters will dance
at my wake/Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake” It’s a fabulously cocky
introduction to a record that, like the very best of Dowd’s work, fizzes with wild tales and a mongrel
approach to traditional American forms. That's Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse, the 13th album
of his career, finds Dowd dispensing with his usual band and, save for the guest vocals of Anna
Coogan, doing everything himself. In some ways it’s a return to first impulses. Dowd has dusted off
the same drum machine that was the bedrock of 1997 debut Wrong Side Of Memphis, concocting tart
rhythms and overlaying them with distorted bursts of guitar and busy electronica. These are songs
about getting laid and getting dumped, about women, devilry and familial dysfunction, often
funny and invariably dark. As such it twists from blues and soul to punk and experimental rock,
though Dowd’s terrific voice (like a Texan panhandle Mark E Smith) roots everything in country
soil. The lovely, gliding “Why?”, a resigned ballad about the one who got away, finds a sort of
companion piece in the woozy “Dear John Letter”. At other times, Dowd is in full swagger, ramping
up the machismo on rap-rocker “White Dolemite” and laying down an evil guitar riff as he recalls
blue-eyed Linda Lou on “Cadillac Hearse”. And “Words Are Birds” is an everyday tale of killer dads,
grinding moms and clever-clever morticians. Suffice to say, this is vintage Dowd. ROB HUGHES

THE AMERICANA ROUND-UP

>* Calexico’s
forthcoming album,

Edge Of The Sun ,

is the product of an
intense writing phase
in Mexico and echoes
some of the elements
of 1998 breakthrough,
The Black Light. Due
in mid-April, it sees the duo of Joey Burns
and John Convertino joined by a welter
of guests, including Iron & Wine, Neko
Case, Pieta Brown, Ben Bridwell (Band Of
Horses) and various members of Greek
band Takim. Calexico’s UK tour kicks off at
the Shepherds Bush Empire in late April
and runs through to early May. Also upon
us is Wood, Wire & Words , the latest
from US bluegrass legend Norman Blake.
The veteran campaigner (and stalwart

of Nashville sessions by Dylan, Cash and
Kristofferson) strips everything to the
basics, meting out narratives with just
voice and acoustic guitar. The album’s four
instrumentals, meanwhile, have a distinct
ragtime flavour.

Highly promising Texan songwriter Cale
Tyson pays his first visit to these shores in
late April. Ahead of debut LP Introducing
Cale Tyson , due on Clubhouse Records,
he’ll be performing as a duo with guitarist
Pete Lindberg, winding up in London after
a stop-off at the Kilkenny Roots Festival.
Before that though, Uncut favourites The
Handsome Family begin a comprehensive
UKtouratSt Giles InThe Fields on March6,
before bowing out at Belfast’s Empire Music
Hall three weeks later. Support on most UK
dates come from the intriguing Daniel Knox.
ROB HUGHES

WILL BUTLER

Policy

MERGE

Win’s kid brother takes
off on a freewheeling
side trip

The kinetic gleefulness
7/10 that pervades Will Butler’s

- onstage antics with Arcade

Fire courses through his first solo album, a
ramshackle, frequently over-the-top barrage of
familiar rock tropes appropriated in the service
of an unmitigated romp. Whereas big brother
Win specialises in grand gestures, Will favours
shouted intimacies and small-scale rollicks,
from the Devo-esque analog synth burps of
“Anna” to the Talking Heads-like art-school
tribalism of “Something’s Coming”. And Win
would never be caught dead rhyming “pony”
and “macaroni”. It’s emblematic of the eight-
song album’s modest ambitions that Butler cut
Policy at Electric Lady, but eschewed the big
room in favour of Jimi’s onetime living room.
BUDSCOPPA

BRANDI
CARLILE

The Firewatcher’s
Daughter

ATO RECORDS

Seasoned American
alt.country singer

7/10 loosens up

- Washington State

native Brandi Carlile has a lot going for her,
among them a fine voice which swoops from
throaty roar to hushed whisper, and a
promiscuous attitude to American roots
music. On her fifth album, she flits between
the warm, folky intimacy of “Wilder” and “I
Belong To You” and something brasher and
more contemporary. She’s most convincing
kicking up the dirt on the snarling blues-rock
racket of “Mainstream Kid” and the wiry
“Blood, Muscle, Skin & Bone”, while the
chutzpah of “Alibi” suggests a kinship
with KT Tunstall. All she lacks is a really
killer song.

GRAEME THOMSON

CAT’S EYES

The Duke Of
Burgundy

RAF/CAROLINE

Staunch soundtrack
work from Horrors’
side-project

8/10 To score his previous film,

- Berberian Sound Studio,

Peter Strickland employed the services of
Broadcast to invoke the occult power of the
film’s horror soundtrack. For his follow-up,
the director has engaged Faris Badwan and
Rachel Zeffira’s Cat’s Eyes project, who bring
harpsichords, flutes and stately synth drones to
the party. It’s less Radiophonic Workshop than
Broadcast’s work: “Night Crickets”, for instance,
glides along on dappled strings. Michael
Nyman’s elegant, pulsing scores are evoked on
“Requiem...” and “Black Madonna”, while “Coat
Of Arms”, with soft vocals and mournful oboe,
moves with a quiet dignity. Only the title piece -
retro-rustic folk-psych - feels like pastiche.
MICHAEL BONNER

The-fDulte

“Burgundy

72 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

7/10

BENJAMIN
CLEMENTINE

At Least For Now

VIRGIN

Barefoot troubadour
combines French
influences with
London roots

The enigmatic Benjamin
Clementine was born in London but discovered
in Paris, where he’d fled an unhappy home and
earned a living busking. His songs are simple -
sparse and piano-led - leaving plenty of room
for clever, self-referencing lyrics and stunning
vocals, which he wields dramatically, with
confidence and invention. Taking elements
from jazz and pop, and also the French lyrical
tradition of Gainsbourg, Leo Ferre and Georges
Brassens, it could all feel a little too knowing
were the songs not so exceptionally strong:
“Cornerstone” is a sensitive gem, “London”
a bravura, conflicted anthem, and “Adios”
sparkles and swoons.

PETER WATTS

w.

HANNAH

COHEN

Pleasure Boy

BELLA UNION

Tearful close-up for
camera-savvy chanteuse

Doing Chan Marshall’s
journey from lugubrious
singer-songwriter to model
in reverse, non-native New Yorker Hannah
Cohen has followed up lonesome debut,

Child Bride, with something more lush. A
moderately gratuitous wallow in post-break-up
melancholy, Pleasure Boy melds Cat Powerly
ennui with a more stylised, Bryan Ferry-ish
self-regard; “You were the most beautiful thing
Yd ever seen” Cohen keens on “Claremont”,
slyly glancing in the mirror, no doubt. The
flouncing is picture perfect on “Keepsake”
and the Ferlinghetti jazzbo of “Queen Of Ice”,
while glassy surfaces mask more intriguing
depths on “Lilacs” - Beach House under
mild sedation.

JIMWIRTH

7/10

BABA

COMMANDANT

&THE

MANDINGO

BAND

Juguya

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES

8/10 Gritty post-Afrobeat
- from Burkina Faso

Sublime Frequencies have been on a roll the last
few years, particularly when it comes to finding
new groups from West Africa. On Juguya, Baba
Commandant & The Mandingo Band, who are
based in Burkina Faso, south of Mali, stretch out
from classic Afrobeat, sourcing both lightness
and heaviness in equal measure from their
peers: the fluid music’s rhythms lift from the
ground, while the guitar and ngoni score the
sky with interlocking patterns. Commandant’s
music is particularly potent when electrified
but allowing for space: see the wild six-minute
“ Waso”, which dubs the mix, sax tangling
with furiously propulsive electric guitar.
JONDALE

THE CRIBS

For All My Sisters

SONIC BLEW

Wakefield’s power-pop
trio return

When The Cribs first
emerged, they seemed
5/10 to fill a void left by The

Libertines, but since then

their roughly urgent pop has increasingly
channelled US punks like Weezer and Green
Day. Which is why an air of inevitability
hangs over their sixth LP. Produced by Ric
Ocasek, it comes roaring out of the traps with
the grittily effervescent “Finally Free” -
Gary Jarman’s larynx-shredding power as
impressive as ever - and cranks through 12
songs, all featuring thickly burred guitars and
endlessly see-sawing riffs that nod at Slash.
It’s honest and immediate, but predictable.
Only “Simple Story” really breaks the pattern,
by setting a slightly breathless narrative in
cavernous space.

SHARON O’CONNELL

f/yn ta m

7/10

CRYING LION

The Golden Boat

HONEST JON’S

Eccentric madrigals,
recorded in a
Govan church

With Trembling Bells,
Lavinia Blackwall and
Alex Neilson have spent

the past few years forging a wayward update
of late ’60s British folk-rock. Now, perhaps
bravely, they’ve chosen to attempt the sort of
raw harmony singing once purveyed by The
Watersons and The Young Tradition. Crying
Lion pairs the duo with Harry Campbell and
Katy Cooper from another Scottish folk group,
Muldoon’s Picnic, along with odd bits of brass
and strings. Like Trembling Bells, the results
are idiosyncratic rather than strictly traditional
- not least on the title track, where Neilson
namechecks Sir John Soane and El Greco, and
his bandmates dissolve into an echoing, Linda
Perhacs-style banshee drone.

JOHNMULVEY

Hannah

Cohen

WE’RE 1
NEW

CeDELL DAVIS

Last Man Standing

SUNYATA

A surprisingly
modernistic blues set
from an old hand

CeDell Davis - an 88-year-
7/10 old, wheelchair-bound

- blues veteran from

Arkansas - is often marketed as some Rutles-
style relic from the ancient Delta. His music,
however, draws from every stage in the
development of the blues, from Robert Johnson
to Jack White. Opening track “Catfish” is
a piece of Hendrix-style fuzz-rock powered
by a “When The Levee Breaks” drum groove;
while there’s some limpid country blues
where he plays his guitar in open-tuning
using a knife as a slide. Davis’ speaking
voice - showcased on the autobiographical
“Mississippi Story” - is slurred and indistinct,
but his singing voice has a power and clarity
that belies his age.

JOHNLEWIS

>*“Making something beautiful out of
something devastating,” Hannah Cohen tells
Uncut as she sums up the essence of her second
LP, Pleasure Boy-a record of meaningful
glances, languid ennui and “relationships
going ass-up”. Tapped up by a model scout while
she was playing soccer in her native California
(she plays midfield), the 28 -year-old moved
to New York to do fashion work but ended up
as a singer-songwriter. Steered through her
first album, 2012s Child Bride, by sometime
National sideman Thomas ‘Doveman Bartlett,
she asserted herself more this time around.
“This time I was battling him for every sound,”
she says. “I couldn’t let it just be drums, bass
guitars.” It isn’t. Lana Del Rey shot through
with Claudine Longet, Pleasure Boys glassy
surfaces and sedate pace are very much at odds
with the music Cohen was listening to at the
time. “Old disco edits and stuff,” she says. “I
keep threatening to do a disco funk record. Like
Severed Heads. I listen to everything. Brazilian
Bossa Nova. Tropicalia...” That channel-hopping
outlook augurs well. “I am always morphing into
something else or growing,” Cohen says. “I
don’t thinkthis is going to be my signature me.
Right now, this is what it is.” JIM WlRTH

DEATH CAB
FOR CUTIE

Kintsugi

ATLANTIC

A postmillennial
variation on Shoot
Out The Lights

8/10 This brutally beautiful

- breakup album was

tracked live off the floor at producer Rich
Costey’s LA studio, and the tautly controlled
power of the performances meshes with the
barely harnessed emotion of Ben Gibbard’s
impeccably sculpted, tortured lyrics. Gibbard
sings with withering immediacy, imbuing
simple lines like “When we kiss in the baggage
claim” with unbearable poignancy. Ceding the
production chair for the first time, founding
member Chris Walla delivers guitar and keys
parts on “Black Moon”, “The Ghosts Of Beverly
Drive” and elsewhere that shoot right through
Gibbard’s broken heart. In the right hands, the
pain-begets-art hypothesis still applies.
BUDSCOPPA

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 73

New Albums

V Produced by:
Laura Marling
Recorded at: Urchin
Studios, London
Personnel includes:
Matt Ingram, Ruth de
Turberville, Nick Pini
and Tom Hobden

spirituality coexists with cutthroat
ambition. Almost every song is rife
with cynical rhetorical questions: she
sounds jaded as she dismantles the
motives of deceptive lovers on the
rootsy, racing “Strange” and “Feel Your
Love”, a baroque tangle of guitar strings and a low
cello drone. The chorus to “How Can I” does sound
unfortunately like LeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live”,
but it contains a calm distillation of Marling’s
intention to reclaim her own youth on her own
terms: “I'm taking more risks now/I'm stepping out of
line/I putup my fists now until I get what's mine.” Two
songs later, the title track races to a warm stream of

piercing strings and jaunty fiddle, and
her comic jabs return, piercing the
anxiety that she briefly cultivated in
LA about whether she was making a

_ valuable contribution to the world: “7

got up in the world today/Wondered who
itwaslcould save/Who do you think you are?/Justa
girl that can play guitar”. Marling’s fifth takes vast
steps forward musically, as ever. It’s more defiant
and distinct than anything she’s done before,
testament to her first go at self-production. But what
really sets it apart from her catalogue is her desire to
break the cycle, to let go and let herself be young.
Next verse? It’s anyone’s guess, including hers.

LAURA

MARLING

Short Movie

VIRGIN

Singer’s LA album takes giant
steps. By Laura Snapes

AS A RESULT of her
comparative youth
and towering musical
talent, it’s rarely noted
that Laura Marling
can be a very funny
songwriter. Dryness is
her strongest comic
mode: she often sends
up her own tendency
8/10 towards capital-R
romance, though
usually it’s disappointing men who receive her
withering glances. At the end of the closing number
on 2013’s Once I Was An Eagle, a song cycle
lamenting another relationship, she remarked,
“Thankyou naivety for failing me again/He was
my next verse”. Marling’s acknowledgement of
heartbreak as songwriting chattel recalled her
oft-cited forebear Joni Mitchell introducing a new
song, “Love Or Money”, on her 1974 live album,

Miles Of Aisles: “It’s a portrait of disappointment,
my favourite theme.”

Short Movie, Marling’s fifth album in seven years,
starts similarly. On “Warrior” she casts herself as a
steed throwing off an unworthy rider who would
only abandon her on his path to self-discovery
anyway. She cites bloodied tracks and horses with
no name, these cosmic Americana jokes about
solitude that she accompanies with a swarming fog
of sound effects and weighty fingerpicked acoustic
guitar that wouldn’t have sounded amiss on Steve
Gunn’s Way Out Weather. “Tasting the memory of
pain I have endured/Wondering where am I to go?/
Well looking back on a bloody trail , you think that I
should know”, she sings distantly.

So far, so droll; another beguiling entry in
Marling’s symbolic scheme, where, as with Bill
Callahan, the attributes and identities of various
recurring creatures are rarely made clear. But then
immediately after comes “False Hope”, where a
seasick groan of strings gives way to her plaintive
question, “Is it still okay that I don't know how to be
alone?” and a charging account of a crisis during a
torrential New York City storm. For about the first
time in her catalogue, Laura Marling sounds
panicked about the future in the same way that
most 25-year-olds are.

Short Movie is Marling’s LA album, where she
moved following the release of ...Eagle, and
returned from a few months ago. Having rarely
spent more than two or three weeks in one place
since becoming famous aged 16, she wanted to give
permanence a shot. What initially ensued was
a period of indulgent Californian solitude -
abandoning music, spending nights alone at
Joshua Tree and experimenting with psychedelic
transcendental practices. But before long, the
rudderless life began to repel her and she had to
return to earth.

On this record, Marling begins to resemble
another sceptical LA transplant, the gimlet-eyed
writer Joan Didion. Quite literally on the bluesy
“Gurdjieff’s Daughter” and the intermittently breezy
and grave “Don’t Let Me Bring You Down”, both of
which cut to LA’s contradictory heart, where

Q3 A

Laura Marling

A fter your six months off music, what drew
you back in?

I got a bit worthy about whether being
a musician was worthwhile to the planet: “Who
do I think I am that I can just get up every day
and play the guitar? That’s bullshit, I should be
doing something more important.” But actually,
that was the most self-important thought I’ve
ever had, and only after being away from music
for six months did I come back and think like,
‘Actually, it’s pretty fucking great what I do,
and I’m pretty fucking lucky to be doing it.’

So my ego got a good bashing and it gave me
proper perspective.

You’ve mentioned realising that you are
actually young. Did you forget that because
of constant remarks on your maturity, or
something within you?

Probably both. Starting somewhere else
completely fresh let me feel quite young. I’ve
been having to conduct myself with the relatively
functional level of grown-up-ness since I was
16,and I don’tthinkl letall that go but I allowed
myself to take less control over things. That’s
how I felt young again - just to stop trying to
manipulate the world to how I think it should be.

It’s your first album that sounds panicked...

I hadn’t thought of it like that but that’s definitely
how I felt. I felt suddenly awake, I felt like I was
living in Blade Runner. I was like, “Oh, holy shit,
everything’s fucked and I am just one person in
a giant country.” INTERVIEW:LAURASNAPES

L|

74 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

8/10

THE DREAMING
SPIRES

Searching For
The Supertruth

CLUBHOUSE

Charming indie
jangle from talented
Bennett brothers

Following 2012’s excellent
debut, Brothers In Brooklyn , siblings Robin and
Joey Bennett have pulled off another impressive
set, with lovely country slow-burners like “Easy
Rider” and “We Used To Have Parties” (the latter
featuring subtle backing from Sarah Cracknell)
sharing space with the paisley underground
jangle of “Still Believe In You” and “If I Didn’t
Know You”. The Byrds circa 1968 are a clear
touchstone, referenced in the harmonising folk
of “Searching For The Supertruth” and the
cosmic chime of “Dusty In Memphis”, while
the crunchy, neatly lyrical relentlessness of
“Strange Glue” brings all these influences into
one fantastic package.

PETER WATTS

ERASE ERRATA

Lost Weekend

UNDERTHESUN

Dissonant Californians
back for first album
in nine years

Sleater-Kinney aren’t the
7/10 only post-riot-grrrl trio

- to decide 2015 might

be a good time to take another swing at it.
Traditionally more awkward than most of their
ilk, Erase Errata’s angular, improvisatory racket
- think The Ex, The Contortions, Beefheart -
feels breezily accessible here, conducted with
tunes and hooks upfront. Playful opener
“History Of Handclaps” is essentially Le Tigre
with a trumpet, “Watch Your Language” fills
out their febrile rattle with splashes of analog
synth, and 100-second blasts like “My Life In
Shadows” and “Watch Your Language” prove
they haven’t lost their skill for a breathless
brevity. Only 21 minutes long, but on the bright
side, you leave wanting more.

LOUIS PATTISON

7/10

ERRORS

Lease Of
Life

ROCK ACTION

Expansive fourth
album from
rocktronic Scots

It’s hard to say whether
art-rock circuit-benders
Errors’ trip to record this latest album on the
Hebridean island of Jura - where the KLF
claimed to have burned a million quid - had
any bearing on its outcome, but something
has had a profound effect on the Glasgow
trio. Loved-up and free-flowing, Lease Of
Life is a Balearic synth odyssey in thrall to
Tangerine Dream - see sax-soaked, 14-minute
finale “Through The Knowledge Of Those
Who Observe Us” - and finds Steev
Livingstone and co drastically revamping
their ankle-biting electro. Rousing epics
“Dull Care” and “Genuflection” are soaked
in hearty man tears.

PIERS MARTIN

K

:

Ci

■J r

&

U*

Tvfun tld ,Vutr-

7/10

EVANS THE
DEATH

Expect

Delays

FORTUNAPOP!

London indie-rock
quartet gets
second wind

Building on the promise

FRiRraiiT conucnrmn

of their self-titled debut of two years ago,

Evans The Death - whose name comes
from the undertaker in Dylan Thomas’

Under Milk Wood - throw themselves deeper
into the grittier end of post punk and fuzzed-up
’90s alt.rock on their second album.

The departure of bassist Alanna McArdle to
front Welsh noiseniks Joanna Gruesome
doesn’t seem to have dented the band’s bruised
vitality and pleasing lyrical spikiness, best
showcased here on “Just 60,000 More Days
’Til I Die”, a rare contemplative track in
which singer Katherine Whitaker longs for
an early demise.

FIONA STURGES

HOW TO BUY... *

BILLIE HOLIDAY

Lady Day’s finest collected

The Rough Guide

igh

To Billie Holiday

WORLD MUSIC
NETWORK, 2010
Most of Holiday’s
finest recordings
preceded the LP
age - this 20-tracker
compiles material released on 78 s between
1936-49. Essential standards (“Strange Fruit”,
“God Bless The Child”, “Summertime”)
sit alongside less familiar classics such
as “Guilty” and “Gloomy Sunday”. A
context-setting bonus disc features tracks
by contemporaries and rivals, from Ella
Fitzgerald to Dinah Washington._

9/10

Lady Sings
The Blues

CLEF.1956
Released

simultaneously with
her autobiography
of the same name
and recorded with
top sidemen from the Goodman, Ellington,
Basie and Gillespie bands. Mid-’sos remakes
of songs such as “Good Morning Heartache”
and “No Good Man” betray some vocal
deterioration, but “Strange Fruit” sounds
more harrowing than ever.

9/10

Lady Day: The
Complete Billie
Holiday On
Colummal933-

1944 COLUMBIA,2001

The big one -10
discs containing
230 tracks of vocal
rhapsody, backed by the finest players of the
age. On release in 2001, the box retailed for a
three-figure sum and won a Grammy as best
historical album. Now on Amazon at about £ 16 .

6/10

FAIRPORT
CONVENTION

Myths &

Heroes

MATTY GROVES

Thirtieth studio
album from timeless
folk-rock veterans

The Fairports are like your
favourite old aunt - although life has moved
on and you seldom find time to visit, there’s a
warm glow in knowing they’re still around.
Guitarist Simon Nicol and bassist Dave Pegg
are survivors from the early-’zos lineup and the
album cover is a smart update on 1970’s Full
House. But these days it’s the literate folk-rock
compositions of lead singer Chris Leslie that
dominate, mostly about historical subjects such
as the tragic Victorian heroine Grace Darling.
Fiddler Ric Saunders enthusiastically fulfils
Swarb’s role and if the results are amiable
rather than arresting, at this far down the
road, that’s surely enough.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

REBECCA
FERGUSON

Lady Sings
The Blues

SONY

Billie Holiday centenary
homage from million-
6/10 selling X Factor winner

- Billed as a ‘reinterpretation

of Lady Day’s classic album’, Ferguson’s
collection is no such thing, for few of these
songs actually appeared on Holiday’s 1956
Lady Sings The Blues set - “Summertime”, for
example, predated it by 20 years. Whether it’s
factual inaccuracy or dishonest marketing, it
leaves a bad taste - a pity, given Ferguson’s
stunning voice. Her soulful phrasing on
“Fine And Mellow” and “My Man” elevate
her to the top tier of contemporary R&B singing,
while the classy arrangements mercifully
eschew brash ‘updating’ in favour of jazz-
age authenticity. But why not simply call
it a tribute album?

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

7/10

10/10

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

FYFE

Control

BELIEVE RECORDINGS

Classically trained
comeback kid
reboots himself as an
avant-soul crooner

At just 24, Paul Dixon has
already survived various
musical ventures and a failed major-label deal.
Back with a fresh sound and a new alias, the
classically trained Dixon makes a highly
assured debut in Control, rebranding himself
as a digital-age R&B crooner in James Blake
or FKA Twigs mode, sighing over skeletal
percussion and jazzy tonal shifts in a silken
sob that breaks into woozy falsetto with
ease. Sometimes these futuristic robo-pop
reveries are less interesting than their glitchy
ingredients, like the pixelated beats in “Holding
On” or the whooshing metallic shudders in
“Polythene Love”, but Dixon clearly has finesse
and imagination to spare.

STEPHENDALTON

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 75

New Albums

NOEL

GALLAGHER’S
HIGH FLYING
BIRDS

Chasing Yesterday

SOUR MASH

Inside the mind of Noel
6/10 Gallagher, aged 47

Chasing Yesterday finds

Noel Gallagher in apparently reflective mood.
“Behind me lie the years that I mis-spent ,” he
reveals on “The Dying Of The Light”. Such
flashes of soul-searching weave through
Chasing Yesterday, whose vibe is established
by the pensive opening strum and sotto voce
delivery of “Riverman”. Elsewhere, “In The
Heat Of The Moment” strives for a Kasabian
stomp. The best songs date from Noel’s aborted
collaboration with Amorphous Androgynous:
“The Right Stuff” is carried along by a nifty
percussive shuffle and lovely layered brass
that makes you wish the entire album carried
their production imprint.

MICHAEL BONNER

DYLAN
GARDNER

Adventures In
Real Time

WARNER BROS.

Teen prodigy is a kid
in a candy store, but
7/10 there’s savvy behind
- the sugar rush

Gardner, an 18-year-old, LA-based bedroom
savant, namechecks John and Yoko on “Let’s
Get Started”, the opener of his debut LP, but he’s
clearly a Paul guy at heart. This set of shiny,
happy hormonal pop songs fuses the formative
music of his ’60s avatars with modern-day
digitised radio music - the kid is a rock scholar,
having absorbed every detail of Recording The
Beatles, but he’s also very much of his own time.
Gardner, whose father was in an ’80s college-
rock band, has also absorbed the work of Ben
Folds and Matthew Sweet, indicating that he
recognises his lineage and mission as a fourth-
generation neo-classicist. And the beat goes on.
BUDSCOPPA

GHOSTPOET

Shedding Skin

PLAY IT AGAIN SAM

Mercury-nominated
MC and poet teams up
with a rock trio

Obaro Ejimiwe’s first two
6/10 albums as Ghostpoet were

- laptop creations, where the

electronic textures matched his elliptical poetry
and his slurring, often indistinct speech-song
delivery. Here he’s backed by an orthodox
guitar/bass/drums trio, which sometimes
renders inert his unorthodox rhymes about tea
and bacon sarnies and cash machines and not
being arsed to get out of bed. The standout
tracks feature guest vocalists: Melanie De
Biasio adds a post-punk neurosis to the title
track, Nadine Shah assists the spooky
Portishead atmospherics of “That Ring Down
The Drain Kind Of Feeling”, while Maximo
Park’s Paul Smith deadpans throughout the
slow-burning “Be Right Back, Moving House”.
JOHNLEWIS

CHILLY
GONZALES

Chambers

GENTLE THREAT

Daft Punk affiliate shows
his classical chops

The Canadian maverick’s
7/10 whimsical journey round

- the music biz reached a

critical point in 2013, when he played a key role
on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. That
band’s arpeggios are referenced in “Prelude To
A Feud” here, reformatted as romantic piano
flurries. After a pranksterish rapping phase,
Gonzales’ career now focuses on his crypto-
classical work, with Chambers a string-assisted
sequel to two elegant Solo Piano sets. Gonzales’
conceptual stunts - arch dedications to John
McEnroe and King Henry VIII, his claim that
“Sample This” is based on a Southern hip-hop
rhythm - never detract from the music’s inherent
prettiness; only a closing vocal ballad (“Myth
Me”) really breaks the prevailing serenity.
JOHNMULVEY

(Xmi.MYS

CIWIDCKS

8/10

STEVE GUNN
&THE BLACK
TWIG PICKERS

Seasonal Hire

THRILL JOCKEY

America’s rising guitar
star leads avant-roots jam

The next headline release
in Steve Gunn’s relentless
schedule is a duo album with Kurt Vile, due
springtime. For now, though, this’ll do nicely:
a hook-up with Virginia’s reliably ornery Black
Twig Pickers, that finds a common ground we
might usefully term psychedelic Appalachian.
Gunn has collaborated with sundry Twigs
before: a sparser “Dive For The Pearl” figured on
his 2014 duo LP with frontman Mike Gangloff,
while banjoist Nathan Bowles moonlights in
Gunn’s road band. Old friendships contribute
to the good vibes, and an atmosphere that’s at
once rambunctious and exploratory: “Trailways
Ramble”, last attempted on Gunn’s 2013 solo set,
Time Off, is a brackish highlight.

JOHNMULVEY

THE JULIANA
HATFIELD THREE

Whatever,

My Love

AMERICAN LAUNDROMAT

Party like it’s 1993:
after 22 years, indie-
7/10 pop hitmakers play
like they never left

With her disarming, heart-on-sleeve, matter-
of-fact persona fully intact, Juliana Hatfield
leads her trio through the true follow-up to
their first and only album, the Billboard
Heatseekers chart-topper Become What You
Are. The intricacies and frustrations of
relationships (plus a smattering of dogs)
dominate, while the arrangements are
kept crisp and simple (“Ordinary Guy”
is positively Ramones-esque). “I’m Shy”,
with Hatfield leaning into the lyric as only
someone who’s lived it can, and “Invisible”,
a rocker on the plight of the unrequited,
highlight a respectable comeback.

LUKE TORN

8/10

- JOHN T GAST

Excerpts

PLANET MU

Underground techno
pulsations from
mystery man

Another mysterious
emission from the orbit
of the wilfully obscure
band Hype Williams. Here, former Inga
Copeland collaborator Gast has struck out
with a hugely accomplished and banging
debut LP. As you might expect there is lo-fi
dub dread, brewing in the slow skank of
“White Noise/Dys”, “Infection” and the
minimalist opener “Shanti-ites”. But there
is also gorgeously cheap rap production in
“Ceremony”, and two absolute dancefloor
slayers. “Congress” is deep house lit by mall
neon, while “Claim Your Limbs” features the
kind of addictive melodic curlicue you find
in minimal techno but surrounded with
echo and decay.

BENBEAUMONT-THOMAS

THE GO!

TEAM

The Scene
Between

MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES

More sunshine and
samples from the
7/10 Brighton sextet

- On their first album in

four years, Brighton’s The Go! Team don’t
appear to have lost their joie de vivre, cleaving
as they do to their formula of bubblegum
indie-pop replete with samples and sound
effects (the LP opens with the crack of a beer
can) and upbeat Saint Etienne-esque vocals.

If it all seems a little too familiar, the hooks
here are undeniable. While the anthemic
quality of the title track suggests that
Ian Parton and co’s aspirations remain
undimmed after n years, “Catch Me On
The Rebound” shows they’ve also retained
their wit as they chronicle the sugar-rush
of fleeting romance.

FIONA STURGES

HOUNDSTOOTH

No News From
Home

NO QUARTER

Beguiling second from
Portland indie rockers

Houndstooth’s 2013 debut
8/10 was something of an

- overlooked gem, a mildly

psychedelic, diffident set that kept promising
to freak out, but never quite did. No News...
more or less repeats the formula, with equally
pleasing results. Again, the focal point is Katie
Bernstein’s nonchalant voice, as endearingly
affectless as Courtney Barnett. Her band are not
quite as modest as they first appear, though,
with a limber, chugging rhythm section and a
resourceful guitarist (and occasional singer),
John Gnorski, who’s evidently learned plenty
from Richard Thompson: check the exceptional
“Bliss Boat’”s wind-out, and “Witching Hour”,
a late VU-style ramalam that could’ve been
productively extended for another five minutes.
JOHNMULVEY

76 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

JAMES MARSHALL

New Albums

8/10

French-Cuban sisters
make their debut, with
a little help from XL MD

Lisa-Kainde and Naomi
Diaz are twins, and
daughters of the late
Miguel “Anga” Diaz, conga player for the
Buena Vista Social Club. They have a new
musical mentor, though, in the shape of XL
boss Richard Russell, who previously brought
his production hand to swansongs by Gil
Scott-Heron and Bobby Womack. The brilliant
“Oya” places the sisters’ voices front and centre,
swinging from Bjork-like vocal gymnastics
into a Yoruban spiritual. Elsewhere, Russell
winds the pair’s cajon and bata beats into
wonky boom-clap rhythms that smartly
complement the romantic “Ghosts” or
“Think Of You”, a nobly heartfelt tribute
to their father.

LOUIS PATTISON

I’M

KINGFISHER

Avian

KITE

Lugubrious Swede
in full flight

Now into his second
7/10 decade as a solo artist,

- Thomas Denver Jonsson

remains one of Europe’s hidden prizes. This
fifth solo album, the follow-up to 2010’s
bluesier Arctic, sees him dish out some
dolorous folk-country, softly embellished
with strings and discreet ensemble play
from a variety of local helpers. What lingers
most is his pale, expressive voice, not a
million miles from the late Jason Molina
or Centro-matic’s Will Johnson, giving
these songs a tangible sense of longing.

“My Beak May Break” and “Lovely Myra’s
Transmission Coat” are as good as they
sound, while “Lion’s Share” is an unexpected
foray into electronica.

ROB HUGHES

JAM CITY

Dream A Garden

NIGHTSLUGS

Concept album of
ghostly anti-capitalist
funk-pop

Assuredly not your average
8/10 dance producer bloke,

- Jack Latham’s 2012 debut

album as Jam City, Classical Curves, summoned
up an ’80s clubbing fantasy that was at once
glamorous, poignant and brutal. Dream A
Garden is a much more personal and political
record, addressing the search for love and
fulfilment under the yoke of a late-capitalism
machine that teaches us to hate ourselves
and each other. Accordingly, Latham’s songs -
frail, naive funk-pop workouts, evoking The
Blue Nile and Prince ballads - are blasted
by digital debris, forcing you to strain to
pick up their nuances. It’s exasperating at
first, but the rewards are there for the
dedicated dreamer.

SAMRICHARDS

t-v . j arntre
Helen moi

JARBOE &
HELEN MONEY

Jarboe & Helen
Money

AURORA BOREALIS

money

Ex-Swan and Anthrax/
Mono collaborator in
7/10 liminal song cycle

- Michael Gira’s Swans

may be back in the ascendant, but it’s worth
remembering that the other key figure in the
Swans’ initial tenure, Jarboe, has been slowly,
patiently and fiercely marking out her own
musical territory for decades now. A prodigious
collaborator, this album with Helen Money,
aka cellist Alison Chesley, is one of her finer
efforts of late. It’s short, and many of the
arrangements feel disarmed, with simple,
graceful settings for piano, cello and
electronics, like on stately opener “For My
Father”, or deep cuts like the coal-black
drone of closing “Every Confidence”, Jarboe’s
voice spectral and detailed.

JONDALE

WE'RE

NEW

HERE

L Tobias
j Jesso Jr

Although Tobias Jesso Jr’s debut, Goon, is
full of sad songs that wryly dissect the death
of a relationship, the Canadian newcomer
is keen to point out that the album is not an
accurate reflection of his personality. On
a recent press trip to Europe, journalists
were taken aback when they met him, he
says. “I guess they were expecting me to be
a bit melancholic like the record and were
surprised to see that I’m a pretty happy guy
for the most part.”

First and foremost a songwriter, Jesso, 29,
cut his teeth as a bassist in two questionable
outfits (indie-rockers The Sessions and failed
popstar Melissa Cavatti) before a family
illness brought him back to Vancouver in
2012 after four years adrift in Los Angeles. At
home he started to write on his sister’s piano,
and these songs eventually became Goon, a
classy collection of MOR break-up ballads co¬
produced by The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney
and ex-Girls man Chet ‘JR’ White. So if all goes
well with Goon - “I liked the word; it was a way
to make the record not so serious” - who would
Jesso like to write for? “There’s a long list,”
he says. “Adele’s been at the top for a while.”
PIERS MARTIN

TOBIAS
JESSO JR

Goon

TRUE PANTHER

Timeless heartbreak
from Vancouver
crooner

8/10 Tobias Jesso Jr looks

- to have rolled out of bed

and delivered a classic break-up album.

The tall Canadian is a piano-playing singer-
songwriter in the vein of Randy Newman or
Harry Nilsson, whose time spent hopelessly
hustling in Los Angeles during the end
of a relationship is chronicled with charm
and economy on his handsome debut, Goon.
True, you’ve heard the likes of “Can’t Stop
Thinking About You” and “Without You”
many times before - “Can We Still Be Friends”
might be early-’zos McCartney - but it takes
some skill to make these sentimental songs
sound this effortless. Just don’t mention Ben
Folds Five.

PIERS MARTIN

THE KING KHAN
& BBQSHOW

Bad News Boys

IN THE RED

Knockabout garage
fun from knockout
live act

7/10 Whether backed by The

- Shrines or working, as

here, with Mark Sultan aka BBQ, Berlin-based
Canadian King Khan is an enormously
charismatic proponent of classic 1960s garage
punk-rock: never encumbered by angst, just
romance. On Bad News Boys, there are rickety
melancholic waltzes, rickety mid-tempo
chuggers, rickety blues swaggering, and rickety
teenage thrashers like “DFO”, which stands
for “Diarrhoea Fuck Off” - and all of it with
exactly the sloppily cooing vocal harmonies
and chord changes you expect. Entirely
unoriginal, but the sort of thing that, 55 years
after it was invented, it’s still hard to get
enough of. An essential live act, too.
BENBEAUMONT-THOMAS

ANDY KIM

It’s Decided

ARTS AND CRAFTS

’60s popster turns
ruminative with
Kevin Drew

You may have cursed
8/10 Andy Kim without

- knowing, for it is he that

wrote 1969 bubblegum novelty hit “Sugar,
Sugar” - he himself also topped the US charts
a few years later with “Rock Me Gently”. Now
he’s having a Cash-like resurrection, with
Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew his Rick
Rubin. Kim has a wonderful voice, somewhere
between Mike Scott, Josh Rouse, Beck and
Bob Dylan, and he syncs beautifully with
Drew’s ramshackle sentimentality. Drum
machines and brass add a little range to
the prettily strummed ethereal balladry,
which is at its best on the anthemic “Sail
On” and the cutely soulful “(I’ve) Been
Here Before”.

BENBEAUMONT-THOMAS

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 77

New Albums

LADY LAMB THE
BEEKEEPER

After

MOM+POP

Maine songwriter imbues
familiar Americana with
unique voice

7/10 This is officially Lady Lamb

- The Beekeeper’s second

album, but really it’s more like her seventh.

Since Aly Spaltro began recording in Maine
basements eight years ago, she’s honed her
wandering ukulele ditties into a heavier
brogue rich with Americana nous and garage
band soul - somewhere between Alabama
Shakes, Neko Case and Ty Segall. While After
lacks the appealing chaos of predecessor
Ripely Pine, it compensates with bright
choruses (“Milk Duds”, “Dear Arkansas
Daughter”) that contrast with a dark, decaying
lyrical scheme. “Vena Cava” chronicles
a relationship breakdown in terms of
exploded ribcages.

LAURASNAPES

LITTLE
MOUNTAIN

Little
Mountain

FLY AGARIC RECORDS

Morcheeba co-founder’s
new band radiates
8/10 California vibes

- Ross Godfrey’s love for

the folk-rock sounds of Laurel Canyon has
always been evident in his day job but, with
his brother’s hip-hop flavourings absent,
this new project allows his passion to prevail.
Slide guitar consequently dominates Little
Mountain’s debut, with opener “Giving It Up”
and “Hide Me From The Darkness” full of
laidback charm. Godfrey’s wife, meanwhile -
Amanda Zamolo, who sang sweetly on
Morcheeba’s 2008 release, Dive Deep - and
Ste Forshaw, whose Joe Cocker vocals they first
heard as he busked on London’s South Bank,
contribute convincing West Coast harmonies,
especially on the serene “Catch Me”.

WYNDHAM WALLACE

8/10

THE LUCID
DREAM

The Lucid Dream

HOLY ARE YOU?

Terrific second
album from English
psych-rockers

Cumbria’s The Lucid
Dream have a sound as big
as Scafell Pike, not so much loud as incredibly
solid, building up layers of quivering keys,
acid-edged jams and whimsical, fluttery vocals
against a rock steady rhythm section that keeps
everything intact. This is a splendid second
album, which sees the band continue their yen
for experimentation, trying out Krautrock (“The
Darkest Day/Head Musik”), Shadows-meets-
JAMC psych (“You & I”), no wave (“Morning
Breeze”), dub (“Unchained Dub”) and near-as-
damn Suicide homages “Cold Killer” and
“Moonstruck”, but always under control and
never forgetting to maintain a distinctive ear for
melody amid the din.

PETER WATTS

MARK LANEGAN
BAND

A Thousand Miles
Of Midnight:
PhantomRadio
Remixes

HEAVENLY RECORDINGS

5/10 Lanegan’s chart-denting
- masterwork retooled

Given Mark Lanegan’s currently prolific output,
a remixed version of last year’s LP Phantom
Radio might seem superfluous. Certainly,
there’s a lot of gratuitous noodling here, not
least in UNKLE’s version of “The Killing
Season” which shows that, without Lanegan’s
biblical anguish, there’s not much left to play
with. However, Mark Stewart’s treatment of
“Death Trip To Tulsa”, which retains both
Lanegan’s croon and the air of dread, is a more
worthwhile exercise, as is Tomas Barfod’s
ambient recalibration of “Dry Iced”. All in all,

A Thousand Miles... is a diverting curio, but
no substitute for the original.

FIONA STURGES

LIGHTNING
BOLT

Fantasy Empire

THRILL JOCKEY

Rhode Island art-metal
duo’s first in five years

Over 20 years, the furiously
8/10 pummelling and fuzz-

- slathered, overdriven

noise rock of this drums/bass duo has become
almost a template of its type. So much so, that
to avoid repeating themselves on their sixth
album, Brians Chippendale and Gibson
changed their MO, using live looping, recording
in a pro studio and mixing post-performance.
The result is unmistakeably LB - thrillingly
primal and intuitive, with laser-cut drum
patterns and riffs hammered to the precisely
judged point of obliteration - but their usual
murk has cleared, most strikingly on 11-minute
closer “Snow White (& The Seven Dwarves
Fans)”, which joins the dots between Megadeth,
Melvins and Mark Stewart & The Maffia.
SHARON O’CONNELL

HOW TO B

POST-’90s

MADONNA

Ray Of Light

WARNER BROS,1998
All but written off after
mid-’ 90 s potboilers
Bedtime Stories and
Evita , Madonna’s
spiritual reawakening as
a techno mystic for Ray
Of Light had a lot riding on it. Luckily, William
Orbit’s signature blend of pulsing electronica
(“Ray Of Light”) and trip-hop cyber ballads
(“Frozen”) proved priceless. At 67 minutes, it’s
long enough for a decent yoga session, too.

8/10

Music

WARNER BROS,2000
Straight back in the
studio after Ray Of
Light with Orbit and
Parisian post-punk
veteran turned
electro sage Mirwais
AhmadzaT, the stylish Music reinforced
Madge’s connection with the dancefloor and
also brought country elements to the table,
including a cover of “American Pie”. And, er, who
can forget Ali G’s appearance in the video for
the flashy title track.

7/10

Confessions
On A Dance Floor

WARNER BROS,2005

Loading up on poppers
and, in a master stroke,
recruiting English
synthpop prodigy
Stuart Price, Madge
followed the lacklustre American Life with
this irrefutably camp hi-NRG romp. Sure, its
Abba-sampling smash “Hung Up” masked
much of Confessions padding, but this fruity
homage to ’70s and ’80s disco resonated
profoundly with fans._

8/10

PIERS MARTIN

JAMES
McMURTRY

Complicated Game

COMPLICATED GAME

Texas poet; features
final appearance from
the late Ian McLagan

Through the ’00s,
McMurtry composed some
of the fiercest protest songs ever (“We Can’t
Make It Here”, say) confirming his reputation
as pop’s most literary working songwriter.
Complicated Game is his first studio record in
six years, and though it backs away, ever so
slightly, from upfront politics, and farther still
into quietly elegant acoustic arrangements,
McMurtry’s flair for the cinematic shines
brighter than ever. Sharp character sketches
and gritty storytelling, hard times and dead
ends dominate each song (especially the
seven-minute, would-be rogue fisherman’s
tale “Carlisle’s Haul”) spinning out blunt,
beatific lines on the times.

LUKE TORN

6/10

MADONNA

Rebel Heart

INTERSCOPE

Material Girl bares
all on patchy 13th

Recent Madonna albums
have tended to recycle
cliches and trends -
detrimentally in
MDNA’s case - in a bid to keep the 56-year-old
at pop’s cutting edge. Rebel Heart almost gets
the balance right, but at 19 tracks, most in the
industrial party-pop style of cheeseball
producers Diplo and Avicii, there’s simply
too much going on. Booming, off-kilter
electro-rap cuts written withKanye West
called “S.E.X.”, “Illuminati” and “Iconic”
(featuring a Mike Tyson cameo) are certainly
bracing, while on “Joan Of Arc” and
“ Veni Vidi Vici” she’s candidly confessional.
Ultimately, the message seems to be,
she’s a survivor - and she just about gets
through this.

PIERS MARTIN

78 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

SAM LEE &
FRIENDS

The Fade In Time

THE NEST COLLECTIVE

A British song collector expands
the horizons of folk. By John Mulvey

B W ON THE OCCASION of

I his 70th birthday in
late January, I was
I re-reading my 2007
I interview with Robert
I Wyatt. We were talking
I about national identity
■ and about how, in spite
H of all his cosmopolitan
H influences and
8/10 interests, Wyatt is

- always seen as an

indelibly British artist. “No-one,” he said, “has
allowed and welcomed, as a xenophile, non-English
cultures so wholeheartedly into their lives and into
their brains and into their food more than I have.
And yet I don’t feel the slightest bit compromised or
diluted or melted as a human being. I’m as English
as my Staffordshire great-grandparents.”

The second terrific album by Sam Lee, The Fade In
Time , is driven by a fundamentally similar mindset.
Lee is, notionally, a folk singer, and the 12 old songs
on The Fade In Time are all drawn from British
tradition, in many cases learned from gypsies and
travellers. For all his meticulous historical research,
however, Lee is not much of a traditionalist. Instead
of preserving the songs in aspic, he sees his material
as part of a living tradition, and subjects it to radical,
internationalist treatments. So a mystical Scottish
hunting song like “Jonny O’The Brine” is given a
woody, organic momentum, tablas to the fore, that
makes it sound like a kind of acoustic techno, then
layered with horns inspired by Tajikistan wedding
bands. Japanese kotos and Indian shruti boxes
underpin Romany laments and tales of sacred
hares. Jazz trumpets and chamber strings tangle,
elegantly, with banjos and fiddles. And, on the
outstanding “Bonny Bunch Of Roses”, a Napoleonic
ballad is played out over a crackly Serbian 78.

But whatever Lee throws at the songs, their
Britishness is never diminished, but critically
augmented and expanded.

This kind of cross-cultural experiment is still a
risky business, of course. Often, self-consciously
modern updates of folk songs can end up
compromised, driven by good intentions rather
than sound aesthetic choices. Nevertheless, Lee and
his large band of friends (among them co-producers
Arthur Jeffes and Jamie Orchard-Lisle, lynchpins
of the latterday Penguin Cafe Orchestra) prove
uncannily empathetic in their decision-making;
for all the ideas and juxtapositions that illuminate
these songs, none feel jarring or tokenistic.

The “Fade In Time” is a phrase lifted from “Over
Yonders Hill”, but Lee characterises it as “the
textural decays, the transience of time we pass
through while listening, and that temporal trance
we enter into when listening.” In that spirit, Lee
slips field recordings of old singers into his mix
(as he did on his 2012 debut, Ground Of Its Own),
prefacing his subtly orientalised version of the
Scottish “Lord Gregory” with a moving recitation
by one Charlotte Higgins, recorded in 1956. Time,
cultures, national identities collapse again and
again, with uncommon empathy and grace.

Lee is a charismatic figure at the heart of all this,

Q,3 A

Sam Lee

obert Wyatt’s often described as
“quintessential^ English”, but he’s also
a committed internationalist, anything
but parochial. Is that something you recognise
in your work?

Yes, completely so. I look at my representation
of folk a little bit how we imagine a walk in an
English country garden. To anyone in it, it feels
unquestionably like you’re in a garden in
England, but in actuality we’re surrounded by
imported plants from all over; the Himalayan
mountainsides, South American temperate
forests, Roman apothecaries. I want my music
to feel local, a ‘home from home’. The sonic
beddings which appeal to me most are ones that

have an ability to induce, to transport, to alter the
state of the listener and give the sense also of
being part of a much deeper and geographically
indefinite place.

Do you think the possibilities of history and
tradition are underused in contemporary
British music?

‘History’ and ‘tradition’ are such loaded words.
The world of contemporary music is all about the
forward-thinking, the now, the new, the next.

All the stuff that references ’7o/’8os electronica -
that’s history for a lot of listeners and makers. And
I think that’s great. I love modern sounds and the
ephemerality of it. However, I think there’s much
more scope to marry these styles with a musical
connection to the more distant past, to explore a
more ‘spiritual realm’ - without being millstoned
by stereotypes. I’m interested in re-wilding and
getting back to the roots of things.

as theatrically attuned as he is
scholarly: other details on his CV
include burlesque dancing,
anthropology, performingwith the
Yiddish Twist Orchestra and being
taught wilderness skills by Ray Mears.
Occasionally, his adventurousness -
and his serene, inflected voice - can
recall Damon Albarn. On “Moorlough
Maggie” and “The Moon Shone On
My Bed Last Night”, Jonah Brody’s
koto and ukulele - a frequently twee
instrument transformed into something ethereal -
are reminiscent of the way a kora added exotic,
harmonious new dimensions to Albarn’s
Dr Dee project.

V Produced by: Arthur
Jeffes and Jamie
Orchard-Lisle
Recorded at: The
Hideaway, Hippodrome
Place, St Jude’s Hall,
Fossil Studios,

St Mark’s Hall and
Convento di Santa
Croce, Batignano, Italy
Personnel includes:

Sam Lee (vocals,

Jew’s harp, shruti box,
kantele), Josh Green
(perc), Steve Chadwick
(trumpet, cornet, horns,
conch, piano), Jonah
Brody (uke, piano, koto,
bass, flute), Flora Curzon
(violin), Francesca
Ter-Berg (cello), Cosmo
Sheldrake (banjo)

“Moorlough Maggie”, too,
exemplifies the force of Lee’s own
personality on these songs, laden as
they are with so much inherent and
applied cultural baggage. A love song
that involves grand promises of flocks
of sheep, herds of cows and, perhaps
optimistically, about a hundred ships,
“Moorlough Maggie” is taken with
such measure and emotional
investment that it becomes Lee’s
own “Song To The Siren”. In the midst
of it all, he provides a calm, steadying anchor;
ambitious, eclectic but, ultimately, dedicated to
the enduring passions that resonate through this
treasure trove of great song.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 79

New Albums

JESSE MALIN

New York Before

The War

ONE LITTLE INDIAN

Erstwhile D Generation

life

In the more assaultive

passages during the

7/10 course of this celebration
- of NYC rock’n’roll - such

as “Addicted”, “Oh Sheena” and “Turn Up
The Mains” - you might think you were
listening to Parquet Courts. Sure, Malin and
his veteran crew evidence more refinement
than their younger kinsmen, but both play
with ecstatically adrenalised intensity.
Malin would’ve been wise to trim the 13
songs down to 10, thus eliminating the
soggy middle of this otherwise crisp platter,
but the LP’s meatiest tracks, also including
the epic ballad “She’s So Dangerous” and
the Peter Buck-powered jangle-rocker
“I Would Do It For You”, are at once timeless
and immediate.

BUDSCOPPA

7/10

KEATH MEAD

Sunday Dinner

COMPANY RECORDS

South Carolinian’s
sweet’n’easy first

Given that his debut was
produced by Toro Y Moi,
recorded in his home
studio and released on
his label, you might assume that Mead is
desperately surfing a late wave of chillwave,
but this unassumingly seductive set runs
deeper than that. Its theme of late-adolescent
innocence versus 25-year-old maturity is made
most explicit on “Grow Up” and expressed
in sun-struck, slacker/power pop that nods
at Big Star, Paul Simon and Squeeze. But
“Where I Wanna Be” and “Quiet Room” are
wilder cards - the first an exercise in sweet,
folkish fingerpicking that gives way to
synth whooshes, the latter a psychedelic
number, tricked out with electronics, that’s
oddly ominous.

SHARON O’CONNELL

THE MINUS 5

Dungeon Golds

YEP ROC

10th disc from power pop
collective, featuring Ian
McLagan, Peter Buck,
Jeff Tweedy

9/10 A side project dwarfing

- all side projects, Scott

McCaughey’s group now inexplicably sports a
lifespan double that of The Beatles. This set
combines recordings from a number of super¬
indie EPs, and while the ensemble always
combines a bemused, tongue-in-cheek quality
with a rock’n’roll fanatic’s mindset, Dungeon
Golds - spinning out smart, graceful pop hooks
and hard, Dukes-Of-Stratosphear-type psych -
gazes hard at mortality. “In The Ground”, from
the perspective of a dead man, its chiming
melody giving way to a burning guitar coda,
is a gem; the grinding “My Generation”,
meanwhile, slyly inverting The Who, staving
off death, is simply a monster.

LUKE TORN

8/10

THE

MONOCHROME
SET

Spaces Everywhere

TAPETE

Art-pop evergreens’
holey bible

Polo coaches to the
four horsemen of the
apocalypse, The Monochrome Set’s elevated
sense of the absurd helped make them the
darlings of Japanese indie-pop fetishists, subtly
weaving impenetrable in-jokes, death rites and
freemasonry into their Salvador Dali meets The
Beatles kaftan. The London nouvelle vague-
ists’ 12th studio album, Spaces Everywhere has
arch, but craft aplenty too; fans of their 1982
boutique classic Eligible Bachelors will swoon
for the cute “When I Get To Hollywood”, but
“Fantasy Creatures” and the title track find
singer Bid - five years post-stroke - hitting
perhaps the most ecstatic high notes of his
career. Inscrutably swish.

JIMWIRTH

LI

7/10

MOON DUO

Shadow Of The Sun

SACRED BONES

Trancey business as
usual from drone-rock
archetypes

It’s rarely easy to
differentiate between Moon
Duo and Ripley Johnson’s
other band, Wooden Shjips. The problem - if it
is a problem, of course - remains on the Duo’s
third album, compounded by the recruitment of
a flesh-and-blood drummer (John Jeffrey) to
augment the machine beats. Shadow Of The Sun,
though, includes strong takes on the familiar
Johnson schtick of Spacemen 3 throb and
ambulatory guitar solos, best exemplified by the
opening “Wilding”. Fractional variations prove
rewarding, too: “Zero’”s dazed hybrid of Suicide,
The Stooges and Joy Division; a hint of choogle
on “Slow Down Low”; and a pervading suspicion
that Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s affections are
shifting from Spacemen 3 to early Spectrum.
JOHNMULVEY

ALLISON
MOORER

Down To Believing

PROPER

Troubled, heart-
on-sleeve tales on
Alabama troubadour’s
8/10 ninth album

- Always a confessional

writer, Moorer has never got closer-to-the-bone
than on this cathartic set. Half a dozen songs
ooze with candid heartache over her recent
separation from husband Steve Earle; “Mama
Let The Wolf In”, about their son’s autism, brims
with guilt and hurt over a choogling Creedence
riff, and the pedal-steel drenched “Blood” is a
heart-felt shout-out to sister Shelby Lynne. The
influence of Earle continues to loom musically,
too: “Like It Used To Be” and “Thunderstorm/
Hurricane” are tough-edged rockers in the
mould of her ex at his most rambunctious, circa
Guitar Town. Out of the pain and anger, Moorer
has fashioned the finest album of her career.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON

MUGWUMP

Unspell

not

SUBFIELD

New Wave of Belgian
New Beat anyone?

Borrowing his stage alias
from a fictional William
7/10 Burroughs monster,
Geoffroy “Mugwump”

Dewandeler has been a club DJ and promoter
on the Belgian club scene for over 20 years.
Following a decade of irregular EP releases,
including the 2008 classic “Boutade”, this
belated debut album brings the early 1990s
New Beat sound up to date with chunky
synth ripples, guest vocalists and juddering
mid-tempo rhythms. Some of the vocal numbers
feel like cluttered indie-dance throwbacks,
but they are outshone by pure electronic
creations such as “Memento Lies” and
“A Quarter Heart Left”, stand out, warm¬
blooded Euro-throbbers rolling along on
a satisfying bed of analog squelch.
STEPHENDALTON

7/10

MUMDANCE
& LOGOS

Proto

TECTONIC

Future-facing grime duo
dig into dance history

Late last year, Mumdance
& Logos’ label Different
Circles released Weightless
Vol 1, a compilation that pioneered a floaty,
ethereal spin on London’s signature urban
sound, grime. Proto, though, takes another
tack entirely, being a homage to bleep techno
and hardcore seen through 2015 eyes. It’s easy
to imagine Vicks-smeared ravers grasping for
the lasers during the rude bass squiggles of
“Dance Energy (89 Mix)”, but the collection
is most interesting when the pair set out to
pervert their source material: see the insane
repetitions of “Move Your Body”, or “Bagleys”,
a spooky tribute to the long-dead Kings
Cross venue that kept clubbers spangled
throughout the ’90s.

LOUIS PATTISON

NAGISA
NITE

A Long Swim

P-VINE

Gorgeous album
by Japanese
indie veterans

8/10 American musician and
- writer David Grubbs once

described the Japanese duo-cum-quartet
Nagisa Ni Te as a “gentler, more otherworldly
confident Crazy Horse”. It’s still an accurate
take on their gorgeous, pastoral songs, which
share the quality of an extended exhale. A Long
Swim is their first album since 2008’s Yosuga,
and is yet to find release outside of Japan
(previous albums appeared in the USA on
Jagjaguwar), but it’s worth hunting down:
the songs of Shinji Shibayama and Masako
Takeda are performed with disarming
simplicity and honesty, the better to let
their melodies - alternately folksy or soaring -
run to full bloom.

ION DALE

80 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

NITE FIELDS

Depersonalisation

FELTE

Australian quartet
turn shoegaze revival
upside down

Recorded over a period
of four years in three
Australian cities, Nite
Fields’ debut album is a far grittier prospect
than the neon-lit, i98os-flavoured spelling
of their name suggests, thanks largely to
its predominant mood of nocturnal gloom.
Singer Danny Venzin murmurs his way
through glissando guitars and Peter Hook
basslines on “Fill The Void”, while “Pay
For Strangers” boasts a dreamy Slowdive
lilt. But there are also hints of The Sound
and The Chameleons in the more urgent
“Prescription”, and intriguing echoes of
fellow Antipodean Flying Nun acts like
The Verlaines in “You I Never Knew”’s
chiming guitars.

WYNDHAM WALLACE

7/10

7/10

PANORAM

Background
Story

WANDERING EYE

Italian outsider’s
late-night reveries

Panoram’s bewitching
debut album, Everyone
Is A Door, topped a few
of 2014’s loftier best album lists, though part
of its dusty allure surely lay in the relative
anonymity of its producer, a contemplative
Roman, it seems, named RMartirani. Its
follow-up, released on his own Wandering
Eye label, is a much more focused piece,
offering several jazzy cuts of speakeasy
trip-hop (“Dead Plastic”, “You Are Correctly
Lost”) and downtempo Ninja Tune gear
(“Anamnesis”). Most appealing, though,
is the simple Satie of the title track and
“There Was A Hole Here”, which channels
Massive Attack and Felt with no little
insouciance.

PIERS MARTIN

TOM PAXTON

Redemption Road

PAX RECORDS

Greenwich Village
legend bids touring
adieu with strongest
LP in years

8/10 Playing like a sampler

- from across his 50-plus

years as a folk music mainstay, Tom Paxton’s
62nd album adroitly mixes traditional-style
balladry with silly novelties, front-porch
philosophising with political outrage. The
songs, relaxed outings wrapped in fiddle and
dobro, mandolin and steel guitar, are put across
in Paxton’s friendly, conversational delivery.
While the title track, with Janis Ian’s
harmonising, feels like a lifetime’s majestic
summing up, two others - the scorching
political commentary “If The Poor Don’t Matter”
and “Mayor Of Macdougal Street”, a tribute to
Dave Van Ronk - best typify Paxton’s striking
recommitment to imagistic songwriting.

LUKE TORN

7/10

NRVS LVRS

The Golden West

HZ CASTLE

SNC CTHDRL from San
Franciscan CHVRCHES

Priced out of their once
groovy bohemian
neighbourhoods by
arriviste salarymen,
NRVS LVRS’ songs of love and Haight paint
a decidedly ungroovy picture of modern
San Francisco; “You have the warmth of a
hologram ,” chorus Andrew Gomez and Bevin
Lee as they call out their new neighbours on
“Troubleshooter”. Their debut album, The
Golden West is a largely blissful rush of
electronically reprocessed indie pop,
seemingly rooted in the fin-de-millennium
angst of baroque Scots The Delgados or
fellow Californians Grandaddy. Hearts
heavy but melodies souffle light, NRVS
LVRS’ rearguard action against encroaching
blandness is a noble crusade. VV L RVLTN.
IIMWIRTH

OF MONTREAL

Aureate Gloom

POLYVINYL RECORDS

More torrential
verbosity from veteran
psych-rock visionary

Songs just seem to pour
7/10 out of Kevin Barnes in

- vast patchwork sprawls

of shape-shifting, style-hopping, epically
verbose baroque-and-roll. The Athens, Georgia-
based maximalist is in unusually confessional
mood on Of Montreal’s 13th album, bitterly
chronicling private life problems on “Empyrean
Abattoir” and “Aluminum Crown”. He also
makes a rare political statement with the
dystopian disco-funk howl of “Bassem Sabry”,
named after an Egyptian human rights activist
who died last year. Bursting with good ideas,
albeit often self-defeating in its kaleidoscopic
complexity, much of Aureate Gloom sounds like
the great psychedelic retro-glam rock opera that
Graham Coxon might one day compose.
STEPHENDALTON

HOW TO BUY...

rl

TOM PAXTON 1

l - m

Village voice on CD

t/i

Ramblin’ Boy

ELEKTRA,1964 _

Paxton may not have
had the bite of early
Dylan or Ochs, but he
definitely had the wit,
and songs. To cite two
from his Greenwich
Village debut: “Last Thing On My Mind”
almost instantly transcended into pantheon of
the universal; while “Can’t Help But Wonder
Where I’m Bound” summed up the state of
just about any soul-searching Baby Boomer
pondering their fate. _

8/10

6

ELEKTRA, 1970

His weirdest, most
experimental effort
— backdrop ranging
from cartoony to
baroque — Paxton
hits a kind of
off-kilter songwriting prime here. From
anti-war (“Jimmy Newman”) to pro-ecology
(“Who’s Garden Was This”) to “Annie’s
Gonna Sing HerSong”, an in-and-out-of-love
song put to fine use by Bob Dylan on
Another Self-Portrait, 6 is Paxton’s most
inspired work._

9/10

Heroes

VANGUARD, 1978
Paxton the pure
folksinger quietly
went about his
business. Includes
two neglected
masterworks: “Phil”
a heartfelt, unflinching, richly humanising
tribute to late friend Phil Ochs, and “The
Death Of Stephen Biko” a lament for the
murdered anti-apartheid activist. _

7/10

LUKE TORN

7/10

PEALS

Seltzer

THRILL JOCKEY

A Future Island and
a Double Dagger, head
to head

Two of Baltimore’s
finest bass players in
collaboration might not

be the easiest sell, but Seltzer has much to
recommend it. Peals brings together Future
Islands’ William Cashion and Double Dagger’s
Bruce Willen, and together they make an
ambient, improvisatory music with a bright,
melodic centre. Recorded in the clock tower
of Bromo Seltzer Tower, the 30-minute “Time
Is A Milk Bowl” takes in ringing chimes,
exquisite guitar layering, and machinery
sounds from the building’s lift, to which the
pair attached a contact mic. “Before And After”,
meanwhile, works rehearsal-space recordings
into a collage that, while lacking Future Islands’
pop nous, retains something of its warm uplift.
LOUIS PATTISON

PEARSON
SOUND

Pearson Sound

HESSLE AUDIO

Debut album of fractured
techno from Hessle
Audio co-founder

In the late ’00s, David
Kennedy was at the
vanguard of the post-dubstep movement that
veered away from pounding bass to offer a more
intellectual - yet still furiously percussive -
take on underground dance culture. Since
changing his handle from Ramadanman to
Pearson Sound in 2011, Kennedy’s compositions
have become increasingly austere; here, tracks
consist of little more than foreboding industrial
clanking, puddles of murky bass, and rhythms
that crackle into life like electricity down a train
track. Its glowering landscape is reminiscent
of Actress’ Ghettoville, but without a similar
supporting mythology Pearson Sound can
feel rather cold.

SAMRICHARDS

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 81

Produced by:
Trey Pollard and
Matthew E White

MATTHEW
E WHITE

Fresh Blood

DOMINO

Bigger! Groovier! Louder! Matthew
E White’s Spacebomb journey
continues. By Michael Bonner

MATTHEW E WHITE
sets out his expansive
musical philosophy
early on Fresh Blood.

On the second track,
“Rock & Roll Is Cold”,
the bandleader offers
cautionary advice to
the listener: rock’n’roll,
he counsels, has no
soul, R&B doesn’t have
a key, and “ gospel licks,
they don't have no tricks”. Point made, he concludes:

“Everybody likes to talk/Everybody likes to talk shit”.
The song is lighthearted and playful - imagine the
Velvets’ “What Goes On” byway of Curtis Mayfield,
set to lavish R&B horns and a deep rolling piano
groove. But if anything, it is also emblematic of
White’s way of doing things: don’t look too deeply
into process, any attempts to codify music will
essentially rob it of its magic and malleability. It’s a
policy that has stood White in good stead since his
2012 debut LP Big Inner, a lustrous country soul
rhapsody cut in White’s attic HQ at his Richmond,
Virginia studio-cum-label, Spacebomb. Since then,
he’s been kept rather busy with the small matter of
an 18-month tour to support Big Inner, along with
the phenomenal heat the album generated.

Fresh Blood finds White’s aims coming closer to
fulfilment. It feels like a natural continuation of the
easygoing, R&B-driven sound dominant on Big
Inner; but it is a more energetic, and in places darker,
record than its predecessor. The focus is wide-
ranging: subjects include the death of Philip
Seymour Hoffman and abuse within the Catholic
Church. Opener “Take Care My Baby” telescopes
out from intimate, piano and guitar beginnings to

incorporate soft and low Bacharach-
style trumpets before blooming into
full-on psych R&B. As it turns out,

White’s strong grasp of layering is
critical to the momentum. For instance,
the choir’s call-and-response (a sassy
“Ooh la la ooh la la/Ooh la la ooh la la”)
that runs through the background of
“Rock & Roll Is Cold”, or the additional
percussion that arrives for the final
minute or so, contribute incrementally
to the song’s propulsive dynamic. Each
song features choir, horns and strings, as well as his
house band, accounting for a minimum of 30 people
per track: that naturally incurs a lot of admin,
writing and arranging their respective parts. White
and his co-arranger Trey Pollard evidently thrive on
this attention to detail. “Fruit Trees”, for instance,
with its stop-start melodies, burnished brass and
staccato strings, sees them fully flex their grand
songwriting ambitions. “HolyMoly”, meanwhile,
foregrounds White’s more intimate qualities as a
songwriter. Written in response to the child abuse
scandal in the Catholic Church, it seems deliberately
to reflect Marvin Gaye’s socially conscious protest
songs - the title is likely a gentle nod to “ Wholy
Holy” from What's Going On. “What's wrong with
you! ’’White admonishes over and over as the strings
are goaded towards a rapturous crescendo by
Spacebomb compadre Cameron Ralston’s
percussive basslines and Trey Pollard’s urgent

Ql A

Matthew E White

hen did you first start work on
Fresh Blood ?

I’ve been working on it kind of in a
conceptual way for a long time. I recorded Big
Inner in 2011 and it didn’t come out ’til like late
2012. Then I was touring for almost 18 months
and during that time, I had some ideas for what
songs I wanted to write and the direction of the
record. So, I was focused on what it was that
I was after, even at that early stage.

In what ways does Fresh Blood differ from
Big Inner ?

Big Inner was such a ‘setting up the canvas’ for

soloing. The gorgeous gospel tones of
“Circle ’Round The Sun”, however,
cushion the song’s subject matter:
suicide. “I'm screaming and crying,
seeking shelter from the storm/Put
your arms around me, Jesus, tonight”,
whispers White. In fact, “Circle ’Round
The Sun” ushers in a more reflective
phase for Fresh Blood. It’s followed by
“Feeling Good Is Good Enough”, a
breakup song buoyed on melancholic
strings and sympathetic brass parps.
White gracefully tackles the death of Philip
Seymour Hoffman on “Tranquility”, his double-
tracked whisper oddly unsettling as it disappears
beneath sporadic flourishes of feedback and
keening strings. The song’s closing line - “Rid my
heart of all that resists tranquility” - harks back to
the idiom of ’70s soul. White brings Fresh Blood to a
close with “Love Is Deep”. Across the song’s blissful
grooves, he communes across the decades with his
old soul masters: “Love is deep and twisted/Ain'tit
so Marvin?/Ain't it so Stevland?” Additionally, he
namechecks Billie Holiday, Judee Sill, Sam Cooke
and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. These are the big cheeses
in White’s world, and while the sentiment of the
song rings true, there is something typically good-
humoured and teasing about the way White not only
addresses his storied predecessors but also in the
way he interprets the song’s inherent message.

“Love is sweet,” he coos. “Love is sweet shit.”

me. I was figuring out what the tools were gonna
be and whether I could actually do this. Fresh
Blood is taking the next step. I had a plan. The
record is bigger, it’s groovier, it’s intensely
personal at times. It’s not a 180 degree spin on
Big Inner. It has a lot of the same people, it’s the
same process and it will develop from that. But
it’s focused and louder. I’m excited.

Was there a creative goal for Fresh Blood ?
There were a lot of things about Big Inner that I
felt I could better. There was a further step to go,
in every direction. How I used the team, how I
used myself and how I used the arrangements;
how I wrote the songs. All of those things could
get better, they could get bigger and they could
get more potent. For me, it’s about focusing my
artistic voice into something that’s a little bit
more emotional. INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BONNER

8/10

Recorded at:

Spacebomb,
Richmond, Virginia
Personnel includes:
Matthew E White
(vocals, guitar, piano,
hornarr.), Andy C
Jenkins (co-writer),
Trey Pollard (guitars,
pedal steel, string arr.),
Phil Cook (piano)

82 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

New Albums

POLAR BEAR

RON

SASH A S 1 L M

Same As

Jh Y ■ ! T j j

SEXSMITH

You

Carousel

L V

THE LEAF LABEL

Post-jazz quintet

One

COOKING VINYL

Vi

in a bouncy, joyous

L

Hangdog Canadian

mood on sixth outing

songsmith finds his

8/10

Seb Rochford’s outfit,
twice shortlisted for

the Mercury Prize, started life approximately
12 years ago as a cerebral chamber jazz
quartet and, with the addition of Leafcutter
John (aka former performance artist John
Burton), have gradually added weirder
electronic textures to their palette. Their
sixth album is their most direct and uplifting
yet, recorded in the Mojave Desert with leftfield
R&B producer Ken Barrientos. The rhythms
take on a primal urgency, particularly on
the skittery Afrobeat of “The First Steps”
and the hymnal rave of “Of Hi Lands”. Another
vocal track, “Don’t Let The Feeling Go”, is just
a spoonfed breakbeat away from pop gold.
JOHNLEWIS

PURITY RING

Another
Eternity

4AD

Synth-pop duo
polish up their act

From the same Montreal
5/10 scene as Grimes, signed

- to the same label, Purity

Ring initially struggled to distinguish
themselves. This second album might do
the trick. Decamping to Los Angeles, the
band have employed R&B big-hitter Jaycen
Joshua to help buff their sound to a blinding
sheen, while Megan James now sings with the
confident, shrill phrasing (and Auto-Tune
effects) of a post-Disney starlet. The effect,
as exemplified by “Bodyache” and “Push
Pull”, is Taylor Swift produced by Diplo.

There remains the faintest hint of gothic
romance, a kind of Dead Can Dance Class.

But you are likely to slip off trying to locate
any kind of edge.

SAMRICHARDS

7/10

around a decade ago,
Steve Wold’s persona
was that of the hobo genius who’d been
discovered playing mongrelised guitars in a
Mississippi shack after decades of isolation.
That spartan USP still serves him best,
particularly on the one-chord stomp “Swamp
Dog” or the unaccompanied wanderlust of
“We Be Moving”. But, for once, some of Wold’s
tracks here with a full band don’t descend
into pub-blues mediocrity. “Summertime Boy”
and “Roy’s Gang” are pulsating slices of
junkyard grunge that recall The Black Keys,
while it would be nice to hear an entire album
of tracks like the banjo-and-fiddle-led “In
Peaceful Dreams”.

JOHNLEWIS

8/10 happy place

- After two decades of

low-level critical acclaim, Sexsmith’s classic
songcraft picked up commercial steam with his
last two records, Long Player, Late Bloomer
(2012) and Forever Endeavour (2013), which may
explain why his latest throws generous streaks
of sunshine across his trademark wry hand-
wringing. “Lucky Penny”, with its congas,
warm organ and sharp guitar licks, is a
positively feelgood affair, while “Getaway Car”
has the loose good humour of early Wings.
When Sexsmith does finally pull a heartbreaker
out of the bag, it’s a doozy, the hymn-like “All
Our Tomorrows” redolent of The Band covering
Gram Parsons.

GRAEME THOMSON

feel like I’m making antique tables and
chairs,” laughs Ron Sexsmith. “‘Who will buy

elegant and surprisingly chipper summation
of Sexsmith’s gifts. “Going along, I noticed
there didn’t seem to be too many downers on
it,” he says. “I wanted it to be quite uptempo. I
got painted with that melancholy brush years
ago, but there’s always been a lot of humour
on my records.”

He has reasons to be cheerful. Although
2011’s Long Player Late Bloomer was a
pragmatic dip into radio-friendly gloss which
nowadays he “can’t listen to”, it paid dividends.
As part of an ongoing upward trajectory, in
2013 Sexsmith headlined the Royal Albert Hall.
“I flew my parents over. It was a big deal, but
the strange thing was, when I went onstage, it
felt natural. I thought, ‘Well, why not me?”'
GRAEMETHOMSON

8/10

SASHA SIEM

Most Of The
Boys

BLUE PLUM

Take me to your lieder:
classically trained
chanteuse slums it

From last-orders bathroom
dalliances to being
inexpertly felt up during a screening of
The Beat My Heart Skipped, the romantic
adventures on Sasha Siem’s debut album make
a compelling case for celibacy. Love, as the
classically trained composer notes sourly amid
the laptop bleeps and ECM euro jazz burbles
of the title track, is just a “chemical reaction”,
but disparate elements fuse together into
something bewitching on Most Of The Boys.

An uptown fusion of Bjork, The Raincoats
and the Cosmopolitan letters page, it can be
whip-smart (“So Polite”), wistful (“Valentine”)
and wise (“My Friend”). Highbrow, but
undoubtedly knows the score.

JIMWIRTH

SONNYMOON

The Courage Of
Present Times

GLOW 365

Boston duo step through
a warped looking-glass
of deconstructed
8/10 jazztronica

Arch experimentalists

Anna Wise and Dane Orr take their name
from a Sonny Rollins composition, though
their magpie post-pop sound owes as much
to Bjorkish folktronica as it does to vintage
jazz. The Boston-schooled, LA-based duo’s
second full-length album is thick with great
moments, like the processed squeaks and
barks that cluster around a glitchy R&B groove
in “Grain Of Friends”, or the siren chorus of
honks and drones that coalesce into nervy
New Wave art-funk on “Pop Music”. Though
a little sketchy and disjointed in places, this
album is overstuffed with wonky charm and
unexpected beauty.

STEPHENDALTON

SEASICK STEVE

my waresr 1 wenty-rour years ana 14 aioums
into a recording career lauded by the likes of

SUFJAN STEVENS

Sonic Soul Surfer

Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, Sexsmith

THERE'S A DEAD SKUNK

is aware he’s “out of sync. I’m 51 and 1 love guys

Blues loner finally

like Johnny Mercer. 1 don’t know how to do
what Ed Sheeran or James Blake do, I’m just a

works out how to play

traditional pop songwriter.”

with a band

When he re-emerged

Traversing folk, country, ’50s rock’n’roll,

’60s pop and ’70s balladry, Carousel One is an

CARRIE & LOWELL

SUFJAN
STEVENS

Carrie &
Lowell

ASTHMATIC KITTY

A stark, sublime
immersion in
9/10 intimate memory

- Good news for those

for whom the jagged electro edges of 2010’s
The Age Of Adz proved hard to love. Stevens’
seventh album revisits the sonic terrain of
earlier albums like Seven Swans, its soft piano,
banjo, guitar and quavering vocals creating
a gauzy soundscape of unerring beauty.

Named after his parents, Carrie & Lowell
is a kaleidoscopic trawl through formative
memories, cascading with melody and intimate
reminiscence. “Fourth Of July” best captures
the album’s exquisite dance between life, love
and loss, a heartbreakingly pure pop song
which finds solace amid the knowledge that
“We're all going to die”

GRAEME THOMSON

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 83

New Albums

SUSANNE
SUNDF0R

Ten Love Songs

SONNET SOUND/KOBALT

Sixth album from
Swedish art-pop’s
best-kept secret

8/10 Sundfor is huge in Sweden

- and does occasionally

sound like Abba. She also occasionally sounds
like Bjork, Nico, Michael Nyman and Stevie
Nicks. Ten Love Songs began life as a concept
album about violence, which explains the
stormy emotions and dark scenarios that rage
across this ambitious record. Everything from
acoustic waltzes (“Silencer”) and superior
electro-pop (“Accelerate”) to harmonium dirge
(“Trust Me”) and industrial synth (“Insects”) are
bent into shape by Sundfor’s extraordinary
voice; an instrument that slips up and down
octaves and over insane chord changes with
both casual ease and soulful intensity. Ten dark
and lovely reasons why love hurts.

GARRY MULHOLL AND

8/10

THE THE

Hyena OST

CINEOLA

Moody, experimental
score from Matt Johnson

Since The The’s last public
appearance at David
Bowie’s Meltdown in 2002,
Matt Johnson has focused
on soundtrack work. Principally, this has
been in tandem with Swedish filmmaker
Johanna St Michaels, but lately he has found a
new collaborator in his own younger brother,
Gerard. Hyena marks the second outing for
the pair, following 2009’s Tony. Johnson’s
score comprises experimental electronic
soundscapes that intermittently recall
Bowie’s “Warszawa” and the scores of
John Carpenter, while stand-out tracks
include “The Invisible City”, with its loping
guitar motif, the oscillating drones in
“Splayed” and the chilly synth washes of
“Tiny Blue Sirens”.

MICHAEL BONNER

WOLFGANG
VOIGT

Protest -
Versammlung 1

PROFAN

Stripped down techno,
built to confuse

8/10 Wolfgang Voigt’s return

- to music, several years

ago, was cause for celebration for anyone
hoping for more of the majestic ambient
techno he released under his GAS moniker
- at least, until they heard any of his
confounding new music, which takes the
weirdness of his ’90s records as M:I:5 and
Mike Ink and squares the complexity.

Protest- Versammlung 1 collects material
from recent singles in the same vein, and
it’s just as richly confusing. Here, the insistent
thud of techno’s omnipresent bass drum acts
as constraint for flocks of parping tuba, woozy
jazz samples, warped digitalia, and plenty
more confusion.

JONDALE

SWERVEDRIVER

I Wasn't Born
To Lose You

CHERRY RED

First since ’98 from
reformed grungey
shoegazers

6/10 Although recent reunions

- by their old Creation

labelmates Slowdive and Ride have aroused
more interest, you could just about build an
argument for Swervedriver being the superior
band. Live, at least, their dazed melodies
and driving rhythms - part shoegazer, part
petrolhead grunger - gave them more
widescreen thrust than their peers. Here, the
‘dazed melodies’ part of the bargain is upheld
by “English Subtitles” and “Lone Star”, while
the guitars on “Red Queen Arms Race” snarl
effectively. But the point when a drive becomes a
slog is reached before long. Like most albums by
reformed bands, it reminds you what you liked
without opening up an essential new chapter.
SAMRICHARDS

7/10

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Imaginational
Anthem Vol 7

TOMPKINS SQUARE

The classic series unveils
a new clutch of American
Primitive guitarists

When the first Imaginational
Anthem comp was released,
its collection of tracks by John Fahey, his peers
and 21st Century followers seemed a noble but
finite concept. Eleven years on, however, the
series continues to locate wave after wave of
new guitar soli: even for dedicated fans of this
questing instrumental music, most of the names
here will be unfamiliar. Vol 7 mostly avoids
straight-up Fahey acolytes (Christoph Bruhn and
Dylan Golden Aycock being strong exceptions),
showcasing players who favour delicate
atmospheres over blues and folk extrapolations.

A generally lovely listen, albeit one which maybe
lacks the breakout stars - Jack Rose, Chris Forsyth,
William Tyler, Steve Gunn - of previous volumes.
JOHNMULVEY

REVELATIONS

The heavy but melodic return
of Swervedriver

^ It’s been 17 years since they split and seven
since they reformed. Now Swervedriver
finally have a new album to promote - but
all anybody wants to talk to frontman Adam
Franklin about is the Ride reunion. “It’s cool,”
he laughs amiably. “It’s great they’re back
together. Mark [ Gardener ] actually did some
of the recording for the Swervedriver album
and I’m really glad for him.” Equally, Slowdive
“deserve their triumphant return”.

Franklin has been amused by the new wave
of bands proud to label themselves ‘shoegaze’.
“We’d never have dreamed of giving
ourselves that moniker, so it’s funny how the
word has been reclaimed.” Yet he contends
that the movement’s influence reaches far
beyond copycat guitar groups. “You can hear
it in Lali Puna, the German electronic band,
or even Boards Of Canada. It has become this
late-20th-Century psychedelia.”

Swervedriver’s new album, / Wasn’t Born
To Lose You , is a deliberate attempt to “go
back to the source”. Heavy but melodic is
the key, says Franklin, politely rebutting the
suggestion that Swervedriver were mere
pedal fetishists. “We did have a poster of
our guitar pedals,” he concedes, “but on
that poster, instead of the knobs being
‘tone’ and ‘volume’, it was ‘luck’, ‘sweat’ and
‘god’! It’s about using those tools to create
an emotional response.” SAMRICHARDS

WAX STAG
II

OLD HABITS

Friendly Fires
fella’s easygoing
electronica

Wax Stag has the ring
7/10 of an outdoor clothing

- brand, but if there’s

one thing missing from St Albans producer
Rob Lee’s second album, it’s a sense of
adventure. A touring member of long-
dormant outfit Friendly Fires, Lee’s
unhurried follow-up to his 2008 debut
uses warm, analog electronics and
smudged Boards Of Canada arpeggios
to paint a series of lush instrumentals
that chug along dreamily in the vein
of Bibio and Nathan Fake. Moments of
brilliance speckle the likes of “Cloud Cake”
and “Valley Of Ice”, but ultimately the
notion lingers that Wax Stag’s gentle fantasy
is more Bedford than Balearic.

PIERS MARTIN

ZARELLI

Soft Rains

SERIES APHONOS

Edwyn Collins’ band¬
leader breathes new life
into Leonard Nimoy

The latest from Bronze Rat
8/10 Records’ eccentric “music

- library” imprint finds

esteemed session musician Carwyn Ellis - also
heavily involved in the soundtrack to Edwyn
Collins film The Possibilities Are Endless -
revivifying a 1975 spoken-word LP in which the
venerable Mr Spock reads a post-apocalyptic,
1950 Ray Bradbury short story. Unlikely,
unsettling and engaging in equal measures,
especially on the climactic “Blaze”, Ellis’ retro-
futuristic, synthesiser-friendly soundtrack -
part Vangelis’ Blade Runner, part Francis
Lai’s Bilitis - perfectly complements Nimoy’s
portentous delivery of Bradbury’s bleak text,
extending the original 15 minutes to nearly 40.
A timely reminder of Cold War paranoia.
WYNDHAM WALLACE

84 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

GILES BORG

>* Recorded in:
Reykjavik, London,
New York and the
Caribbean

BJORK

Vulnicura

ONE LITTLE INDIAN

Icelandic star’s unflinching
heartbreak diary. By Piers Martin

Bjork, Area and

“USUALLY I DON’T
really talk about my
private life,” Bjork told
The New York Times at
the end of January.
“But with this album,
there’s no two ways
about what it is. I
separated during this
album, ended a 13-year
9/10 relationship, and it’s

- probably the toughest

thing I’ve done.” By now, Vulnicura is not exactly
old news, but its rushed release to digital platforms
on January 20 following a leak - it was due early
March, to coincide with the opening of MoMA’s
Bjork exhibition - has provided plenty to chew
over before the physical editions arrive and the
campaign gets back on track.

In some ways, the sudden, forced arrival of the
singer’s ninth album - a shock tactic last deployed
by Beyonce - suits the brutal nature of Vulnicura,
which chronicles in compelling detail the demise
of Bjork’s relationship with the American artist
Matthew Barney, with whom she has a daughter.

For Bjork, normal family life was ruptured and part
of the healing process, the way in which she tried
to make sense of the schism, was to write down her
thoughts and, as usual, express herself through
music. She wrote, predominantly, parts for strings
and voice - the lyrics scan like diary entries -
and though she’d lined up several technological
avenues to explore after her multimedia odyssey
Biophilia, she decided this could only work as an
old-school singer-songwriter project.

And it is, as far as Bjork records go. Vulnicura -
a compound of‘wounds’ and ‘cured’, the defining
feelings of the periods leading up to and after the
break-up - is, like Vespertine and Medulla before
it, intimate and musically resourceful. Against
shifting sheets of strings and discreet electronics
Bjork contorts and somersaults, kneading
syllables and winding words around others. Her
astonishing voice is the real star of Vulnicura:

“TTzzs tunnel has enabled/Thousands of sounds/

I thank this trunk/Noisepipe ”, she sings on
“Mouth Mantra”, one of the more cathartic
pieces written after the split in which she takes

a vow of silence - “Do something
I haven't done before ” - in a bid to
subdue the sadness.

In the accompanying booklet,

Bjork has dated each song to provide
chronology. Three precede the split -
opening track “Stonemilker”, with
her anxious overtures to Barney to
“synchronise our feelings", was written
“9 months before” - and three come
after it, including the bottomless
“Black Lake”, composed “2 months
after”, while the final three find her
reflecting on love and family. The
whole thing unfolds like some harrowing Lars
Von Trier melodrama in which an unavoidable
cataclysmic event is about to occur after which
nothing will be the same. Far greater than the sum
of its parts, Vulnicura can be a challenge but, once
immersed, it’s hard to tear yourself away.

Much has been made of the contribution of young
Venezuelan producer Area (Alejandro Ghersi), a
lifelong Bjork fan who’d worked with FKA Twigs
and Kanye West. Arriving towards the end of the
recording, after Bjork had recorded and arranged
the lion’s share of the album, his subtle

Q,3 A

Bjork

H ow did you end up making this record?

I guess I found in my lap one year into
writing it a complete heartbreak album.

I was kind of surprised how thoroughly I had
documented this in pretty much accurate
emotional chronology - like three songs
before a break-up and three after. So the
anthropologist in me sneaked in and I decided
to share them as such.

After Biophilia, which explored fundamental
issues, this seems intensely personal.

First I was worried it would be too self-indulgent

programming provides a sensual
framework for the singer. Washed-out
rave stabs decorate “History Of
Touches”, when Bjork sings of the
couple’s “Last time together... every
single fuck we had together/Is in a
wondrous time lapse ”, knowing
that all is lost. The following “Black
Lake”, a funereal dirge punctuated
by pounding techno, charts her
journey from despair (“My soul torn
apart/My spirit is broken ”) to tempered
euphoria: “I am a glowing shiny
rocket returning home/As I enter
the atmosphere I burn off layer by layer".

Just as Volta and Biophilia found Bjork questioning
universal concerns such as identity, politics and
our place in the cosmos, here she gives her heart a
vigorous examination and draws equally profound
conclusions. The costume she wears on the cover
illustrates this: out of the blackness, her chest
cleaved open, emerge brightly coloured shoots.
Heartbreak has a familiar narrative - pain is
weakness leaving the body; what doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger - and there’s seldom a happy
ending. But as Vulnicura makes clear, it does end.

but then I felt it might make it even more
universal. And hopefully the songs could be a
help, a crutch to others and prove how biological
this process is: the wound and the healing of the
wound, psychologically and physically. It has a
stubborn clock attached to it.

Was there a moment when everything fell
into place?

A magic thing happened: as I lost one thing,
something else entered. Alejandro (Ghersi, aka
Area) contacted me late summer 2013 and was
interested in working with me. It was perfect
timing. To make beats to the songs would have
taken me three years, like on Vespertine , but
Area would visit me repeatedly and a few months
later we had a whole album. It is one of the most
enjoyable collaborations I’ve had.

The Haxan Cloak
Personnel: Bjork
(vocals, programming,
string arrangements,
vocal arrangements),
Area (programming),
The Haxan Cloak
(programming),
Antony Hegarty
(vocals), John Flynn
(programming),

U Strings (strings)

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 85

BROADCASTING

TH E RACE FOR SPACE

THE NEW ALBUM
OUT 23 FEBRUARY 2015

UK & IRELAND TOUR

WITH

SPECIAL GUESTS

APRIL

22 HR

23

24

25
28

29

30

PUBLICSERVICEBROADGASTING.NET I AXS.COM I SEETICKETS.COM TICKETMASTER.CO.UK

NEW ALBUM ‘THE RACE FOR SPACE’ OUT 23 FEBRUARY 2015

IN AEG LIVE PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THIS IS NOW AGENCY

ANGE
BRI!

PORTSMOUTH PYRAMIDS
CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE
SHEFFIELD THE FOUNDRY
MANCHESTER RI1Z
NEWCASTLE RIVERSIDE

MAY

01 INVERNESS THE IRONWORKS
02 GLASGOW 02 ABC
03 BELFAST MANDELA HALL
05 DUBLIN BUTTON FACTORY
06 BIRMINGHAM THE INSTITUTE

UNCUT

SCORING: THE ORIGINALALBUM _

lO Masterpiece 1 Poor!

SCORING: EXTRA MATERIAL

lO Untold riches 1 Barrel-scrapings

Archive

REISSUES

COMPS

BOXSETS

LOST RECORDINGS

IQ (Dawning Of A) New Era

11 Blank Expression

12 Stupid Marriage

15 Too Much Too Young

14 Little Bitch

15 YouVe Wondering Now

CD 2: EXTRA SPECIALS

Too Much Too Young EP (live)

1 Too Much Too Young

2 Guns Of Navarone

Skinhead Symphony

a) Long Shot Kick The Bucket

b) Liquidator c) Skinhead Moon Stomp

BBC In Concert At the Paris Theatre (15/12/79)

4 (Dawning Of A) New Era

5 Do The Dog

Rat Race

Blank Expression

8 Rude Buoys Outa Jail

9 Concrete Jungle

IQ Too Much Too Young

11 Guns Of Navarone

12 NiteKlub

15 Gangsters

14 Medley: a) Long Shot Kick The Bucket

b)Skinhead Moonstomp

THE SPECIALS

Specials 1979 More Specials

In The Studio 1984

1980

2 TONE/CHRYSALIS

All three albums, released with extras. By John Lewis

IN 70 S BRITAIN, a mixed-race band from the
Midlands emerged in an era of industrial strife
and social disorder. They revived music and
fashions that were at least two decades’ old,
played riotous gigs to rowdy audiences, and
had a string of massive Top 10 hits. They were
called Showaddy waddy, and nobody mentions
them much anymore.

We still talk a lot about The Specials, though,
and for good reason. Unlike Showaddywaddy,
their revivalism was utterly rooted in the here

and now. The band’s frontmen - the fey, oddly
camp football hooligan Terry Hall and the
growling jailbird Neville Staple - were the very
ideology of Rock Against Racism made flesh.
Their leader, Jerry Dammers, seemed to have
rebuilt Jamaican music from rain-sodden
English industrial concrete. His lyrics -
kitchen-sink dramas of fighting and fucking,
fear and loathing - resonated so strongly with
teenagers that few of them thought of it as
being in any way “retro”. /

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 87

CHALKIE DAVIES

CHALKIE DAVIES

BURIED TREASURES <

SPECIAL SOUNDS...

Four hidden gems you'll find on the
second discs of these reissues...

MAGGIE'S FARM (FROM MORE SPECIALS,
DISC TWO) _

This forgotten gem comes from the B-side of
Lynval Golding's lovely, languorous “Do Nothing”.
Based around an African-style drum section (with
shades of Serge Gainsbourg's “New York USA”),
it sees Hall and Golding howling in impassioned
octaves, adds jabbering pianos, and ends up
recasting Bob Dylan's cryptic, surrealist, anti¬
conformist lyrics for Thatcher's Britain, slyly
turning “National Guard” into “National Front”.

STEREOTYPES PTS1 & 2 John Peel

Session (FROM MORE SPECIALS DISC TWO) _

All of the Peel sessions on these discs are
significantly different from the LP releases.

Here, the Casiotone rhythms of the originals are
replaced by a band playing the uptight tango
beats, Dick Cuthell's mariachi flugelhorn is given
space to breathe, and Neville Staple goes into

an extended patois-drenched toasting section,
wilfully misunderstanding the lyric.

THE BOILERRhoda And The Special AKA

(FROM IN THE STUDIO DISC 2) _

The most harrowing single to ever make the UK
Top 40, buried in a seemingly innocuous mix of
woozy syn-drums, Morricone guitars and muted
trumpet riffs. Written by Rhoda Dakar's original
band The Bodysnatchers, it sees Dakar narrating
a story about being picked up by a “hun/c”in a bar
who ends up sexually assaulting her. What starts
as a disarmingly blank, spoken-word vocal ends in
a horrifying barrage of guttural screams and sobs.

JUNGLE MUSIC Rico And The Special

AKA (FROMIN TFIESTUDIO DISC2) _

An alumnus of the Alpha Boys Kingston orphanage
- breeding ground for Jamaica's finest jazz and
ska pioneers - Rico Rodriguez played trombone
on hundreds of reggae singles before starting a
solo career, with 2Tone reviving his fortunes just as
he was dropped by Island. This spacious, tropical
montage shines a much-needed touch of Montego
Bay on The Special AKA's grim universe.

J

1 Enjoy Yourself (It's LaterThan You Think)

2 ManAtC&A

5 Hey, Little Rich Girl

4 Do Nothing _

5 Pearls Cafe

6 Sock ItTo'Em J.B.

7 Stereotypes/Stereotypes - Pt 2

8 Holiday Fortnight _

9 I Can'tStand It

lO International Jet Set

11 Enjoy Yourself (Reprise)

CD 2 : MORE EXTRA SPECIALS

Singles , B-sides and rarities:

1 Rat Race

2 Rude Buoys Outa Jail_

5 Stereotypes Pts 1 & 2 (John Peel session)

4 International Jet Set (single version) _

5 Rude Boys Outa Jail (version) (featuring
Neville Staples aka Judge Roughineck)

6 Do Nothing (single version) (featuring Rico

with, the Ice Rink String Sounds) _

7 Maggie's Farm_

8 Raquel_

9 Why? (extended version) _

IQ Friday Night, Saturday Morning_

11 Ghost Town (full version) _

12 Sea Cruise (John Peel session) (featuring
Rico)

15 You're Wondering Now (Kid Jensen session)

IN THE STUDIO (2 CD SPECIAL EDITION)

CD 1 : THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

1 Bright Lights _

2 Lonely Crowd _

3 What I Like Most About You Is Your
Girlfriend

4 House Bound

5 Night On The Tiles

6 Nelson Mandela

7 War Crimes

8 Racist Friend

9 Alcohol

lO Break Down The Door

CD 2 : RARITIES BY THE SPECIAL AKA:

1 The Boiler (Rhoda and The Special AKA)

2 You Just Can't Get A Break

5 Jungle Music (Rico and The Special AKA)

BBC Peel Session 12/09/83

4 Lonely Crowd

5 Alcohol

6 Bright Lights

Instrumentals

7 Break Down The Door

8 Racist Friend

9 War Crimes

lO Theme From The Boiler

11 Bright Lights

12 Nelson Mandela

CONTINUED

MORE SPECIALS (2 CD SPECIAL EDITION)

CD 1 : THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

Dammers’ organs
and Golding's
rhythm guitars
bubble and
skank in all the
correct places

\ The band’s 1979 debut, Specials,

/ includes some pretty
faithful cover versions of old
Jamaican ska singles.

“A Message To You, Rudy”
even features Rico Rodriguez,
the veteran trombonist who
played on Dandy
Livingstone’s 1967 original.

But, generally, The Specials’
versions blow the genteel
originals out of the water, with
producer Elvis Costello
recording them virtually live
and capturing the manic
energy of their shows. Dammers’ organs and
Lynval Golding’s rhythm guitars bubble and
skank in all the correct places, but Horace

Panter’s basslines punch hard while Roddy
Radiation’s punky guitar snarls and fizzes, all
the time kept on a tight leash by Costello (who
never much liked his histrionic blues solos).

Often the covers mutate into whole new
songs. Prince Buster’s 1965 Blue Beat single “A 1
Capone” is reworked as the ferociously punky
“Gangsters” (a reference to an ugly gun-related
episode that happened when Bernie Rhodes
took the band to Paris). George Fame’s 1964
version of Rufus Thomas’ “Do The Dog” is
completely rewritten by Dammers as a state-of-
the-nation address {“All you punks and all you
teds/National Front and natty dreads/Mods,
rockers, hippies and ... skin-heads”). And
an obscure Lloyd Charmers single, “Birth
Control”, is transformed into “Too Much Too
Young”, the bawdy, Benny Hill lyrics replaced
by a sense of disgust {“Try wearing a cap!”).

If the debut album was teenage male fear writ
large, 1980’s follow-up, More Specials, presents
a dread that’s more existential than adolescent.
Even the daft opener “Enjoy Yourself”, a Prince
Buster-inspired reading of Guy Lombardo’s
1949 big-band anthem, hints at impending
nuclear war, as does Terry Hall’s first
songwriting credit {“Fm just a man at C&A/and
I don't have a say in the war games that they
play”), while the well-
upholstered exotica of
“International Jet Set” tells
of a plane crash that kills
the narrator along with the
“well-dressed chimpanzees”
in business class. But the
most interesting
development is the sonic
shift from monochrome
into Technicolor: the
complicated, Bach-like chord
cycles on “Stereotypes”;

Dick Cuthell’s mariachi
flugelhorn flourishes; and the Yamaha home
organ rhythms - beguine, cha-cha, bossa nova
- that came plastered all over Side Two

TheSpecials in their prime:
(l-r) Roddy Radiation,Staple,
Dammers, Panter, Hall,
Goldingand John Bradbury

88 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

(Dammers saw it as a DIY punk appropriation
of Muzak). “Ska was just a launching point,”
said Dammers, years later. “I didn’t want us to
end up like Bad Manners.”

As the band fractured, Dammers’ studioholic
tendencies started to overwhelm proceedings.
Smash Hits readers jokingly voted the (newly
rechristened) Special AKA as 1983’s “most
miserable group” and they weren’t far wrong.
“There was a whiff of mental illness in the air,”
says vocalist Rhoda Dakar of the joyless,
endless sessions for the third album, while
bassist Horace Panter says that attending
rehearsals was “like going to a funeral
everyday”.

In The Studio was eventually released in
1984 after three cripplingly expensive years
of sessions. Aside from the literally world¬
changing anthem “Nelson Mandela”, it’s often
dismissed as preachy and sanctimonious. A
reappraisal is due: “What I Like Most About
You Is Your Girlfriend” is a hilariously spiteful
slice of lovers rock, sung by Dammers himself
in a demented falsetto; “The Lonely Crowd”
has that same prowling skank, fronted by Stan
Campbell’s keening tenor; while “Alcohol” is a
suitably woozy reprise of “Ghost Town”. Even if
the didactic lyrics on tracks like “Racist Friend”
get on your nerves, CD2 here has dub versions
of each song, which suggest that this
incarnation of The Specials could well have
been Britain’s finest ever reggae band.

EXTRAS: 7his was an era when bands were
reluctant to put singles on LPs
for fear of shortchanging loyal fans. As a result
there are plenty of stand-alone singles, B-sides
and 12” mixes that pack out the second discs of
each reissued album, alongside live recordings
and radically different Radio 1 sessions.

The Specials package sees “Gangsters”
fittingly installed as the intro to CDi, with CD2
featuring live sessions, including the chart¬
topping “Too Much Too Young” EP. But it’s CD2
of More Specials that’s the pick of the bunch. A
version of “Rude Buoys Outa Jail” - taken from
a bonus 7” that came with early copies of the LP
- mixes Dammers’ boogie-woogie piano with
Neville Staple’s extended toasting (although
this package curiously omits its flipside,
“Braggin’ And Tryin’ Not To Lie”, a track that
Roddy describes as “the birth of ska-billy”).
And the triumphant three-sided single that
closes the More Specials chapter - “Ghost
Town”, “Why” and “Friday Night, Saturday
Morning” - might still be the finest 7” package
in pop history.

All three LPs were re-released 13 years ago,
without the abundance of extra tracks, but
now seem rather more relevant. What then
appeared to document a sealed-in, closed-off
aberration in British popular culture has been
re-energised by the reunion shows. Amy
Winehouse, Lily Allen, Kasabian, Arctic
Monkeys, Damon Albarn, Hard-Fi and
Jamie T have covered Specials songs, while
others - Tricky, Mike Skinner, Hollie Cook and
dozens of grime, 2step and garage acts - have
drawn explicitly from band’s music. Their
gleefully grey take on Jamaica is now an
inescapable component of British pop. Unlike
dear old Showaddy waddy.

Jerry Dammers on the
perils of the music biz and
the proudest days ofhis life

T ELL US ABOUT your songwriting

process? How did you usually write?
How did it change as each album
went on?

My songs were normally autobiographical or
personal political statements of my opinion.
Mainly things I wasn’t happy about. Sometimes
words came first, sometimes a tune, sometimes
both together. With the second album our lives
had changed so completely, “International Jet
Set” was still autobiographical but I was aware
the public probably wouldn’t be able to relate so
easily. “Stereotype” and “Pearls Cafe” were more
or less invented characters with elements of
different real people.

How “live” was the first album? It was more or
less recorded with everyone playing at once, then
some vocals redone and maybe some brass done
as overdubs. On the second album, we started
moving towards recording Roddy’s guitar and
my additional keyboard parts separately as
overdubs, even the drums where I used the
cheesy home organ rhythm machines and
arpeggiators. I thought that was quite a “punk”
idea, but Roddy didn’t really see it that way. I was
getting more interested in the sonic possibilities
of the studio.

How much collaboration was there when it
came to the writing and arranging? I was very
generous with credits. “Gangsters”, “Blank
Expression”, “It’s Up To You”, “Nite Klub”, are
sometimes credited to the whole band, but really
I wrote those songs. Roddy added guitar licks,
Terry contributed one line to “Nite Klub”- “All the
girls are slags and the beer tastes just like piss”. I
also contributed lyrics to Lynval’s two songs “Do
Nothing” and “Why?” and contributed some
lyrics to Neville’s toasts on “Stupid Marriage”
and “Why?”. I also helped Terry with the music
on “Friday Night And Saturday Morning”, all
without credit. On “Man At C&A” I wrote the
music and Terry and I collaborated on the lyrics.
The rest of the credits are more or less as it was.

I was arranger overall but people contributed
some bits. Roddy made up most ofhis guitar
lines. His songs were basic punk, Lynval’s very
basic reggae. I wrote a lot of the bass lines.
“Concrete Jungle”... I think Horace may have
contributed the high bits and I wrote the heavy
dub bass line, those made the song what it was -
jungle 15 years before jungle! As we moved
towards the second album my idea was to move
from monochrome to Technicolor, sonically as
well. I added plucked piano to “Rat Race”, Ice
Rink Strings to “Do Nothing”. I think it would be
fair to say that the more arranged the songs
became, the more resistance I
encountered from Roddy and
Lynval. Roddy didn’t like the
ironic “shoo-bee-doos” on
“Hey little Rich Girl”. Lynval
thought the horns on “Ghost
Town” sounded “wrong!
wrong! wrong!”

Did you write specifically
for Terry or Neville to sing?

I was aware that Terry and
Neville were the lead singers, I wrote some of
“Ghost Town” and some of my contributions to
Neville’s toasts in patois, and I intended him to
sing those bits, but I didn’t tailor any of my lyrics
or what I wanted to say specifically to any singer.
In fact, a lot of my songs were written or part
written before the band was formed, or before
Terry and Neville joined. (“Nite Klub”, “Doesn’t
Make It Alright”, “Blank Expression”, “Too Much
Too Young”, “I Can’t Stand It”, “Little Bitch” -
written when I was 15!) “Pearls Cafe” and “Man
At C&A” were new lyrics to tunes I’d written
before the band.

On the second album, it sounds like you’ve
been picking up influences from lots of
different sources... I went out of my way to listen
to anything that had been regarded as rubbish in
the rock world, muzak, exotica, it was quite
groundbreaking, everyone from electro pop to
2 Tone were trying to consign rock music to the
dustbin of history at that time.

With In The Studio , was The Special AKA
actually a “band” or was it more a collection
of hired hands? No, it was intended to be a
proper band, and the few sessions we did for TV
or radio actually sounded quite good. It’s a shame
everyone had left before we attempted a gig.

Did the experience of the last album put you
off recording for a while? I ended up on my
own, imprisoned in the record contract, with
a large debt to the record company, so there
was no real point involving anybody else in doing
any more recording until they released me from
the contract.

How did you meet the son of ANC President
Oliver Tambo? After I wrote “Free Nelson
Mandela”, Dali Tambo approached me to
organise the British Artists Against Apartheid. I
couldn’t really record for the reasons I explained
above, so I did four years
hard work unpaid in an
office! During that time an
agent of Apartheid walked in
the ANC office in Paris and
shot Dulcie September dead
so I wouldn’t describe it as
fun times, exactly. There
was creativity, of course, in
approaching artists like The
Smiths and New Order for the
series of concerts, and
putting the bill together for the massive concert
on Clapham Common with Gil Scott-Heron, Hugh
Masekela, Peter Gabriel, Paul Weller, Big Audio
Dynamite and more. That attracted 200,000
people. Then I secured the commitment of Simple
Minds, and Dire Straits followed, which got the
Mandela 70th Birthday concert at Wembley off
the ground. My musical creativity was put on
hold, apart from playing “Free Nelson Mandela”
at Clapham, and then at Wembley, which was
broadcast to millions around the world, then
again when Mandela came and spoke. Those
were the proudest days of my life.

"I ended up on my
own, imprisoned in
the record contract
with a large debt”

■

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 89

DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES

ADRIAN BOOT/FIFTY SIX HOPE ROAD MUSIC LTD

TRACKLIST

DISC: TCP _

1 Slave Driver _

2 Burnin* And Lootin'

5 Them Belly Full _

4 The Heathen _

5 Rebel Music _

6 I Shot The Sheriff

7 EasySkanking _

8 No Woman, No Cry

9 Lively Up Yourself

IQ JammiiV _

11 War/No More Trouble

12 Get UpStand Up _

15 Exodus

DISC: 2 DVD or BLU-RAY _

1 Rebel Music (Video) _

2 I Shot The Sheriff (Video) _

5 No Woman, No Cry (Video)

4 Lively Up Yourself (Video)

5 Jamming (Video) _

6 War/No More Trouble (Video)

7 Exodus (Video)

BOB M ARLEY &
THE WAILERS

EasySkanking In Boston *78

UNIVERSAL

Marley’s 70th birthday celebrations open with
a CD/DVD package. By Neil Spencer

7/10

BY THE SPRING of 1978,
Bob Marley was ready for

a new challenge. His media status as ‘The First
Third World Superstar’ was attested by soaring
global record sales. That he had ended 15
months of exile from Jamaica following the
attempt on his life - returning to play the
‘Peace Concert’ that brought a truce to
Kingston’s bullet-prone streets - also marked a
turning point. He’d done his bit for his country.
What was next?

Marley’s answer was to undertake the biggest
tour of his career, one that renewed his wooing
of the all-important North American market

and which would take him to Milwaukee,
Maryland and Montreal, as well as the
already conquered capitals of the East and
West coasts. Also in his sights were Japan,
Australia and, of course, Africa. All would
fall to Trenchtown’s conquering lion and his
strange music - strange because, for most
of the world, roots reggae was still an odd,
scarcely heard quantity.

But first we take Manhattan... and Boston, a
city that had always been kind to the Wailers,
and whose Music Hall hosted two shows (early
and late) on June 8, the former supplying this
live album, the fifth in Marley’s canon after

90 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

Archive

Q,!«A

ZiggyMarley

This album is the first
celebration of Bob’s 70th.
What else is coming down the
wire? Books of photos and
interviews, a big concert in
Jamaica later in the year, we’re
creating events as we go.

The film features animation of Bob for the first
time. The concert footage I found compelling,
and there’s a moment when Bob screams out,

I wanted to show that side of him. The man who
shot the film had to be changing reels during
the show, so we put animation in the gaps...
it’s an artistic interpretation of the music, art.

You have done a lot for kids, UN work. Sesame
Street and Disney soundtracks, a Grammy for

Live! (cut 1975), Babylon By Bus
(cut 1978), and the posthumous
Live At The Roxy (cut 1976)
and Live Forever (his last
performance, cut 1980).

Unusually, Marley
had personally allowed
dispensation to a young fan
to film the show from the
front row. The resulting footage
is an engaging addition,
though better concert film is
already freely available (the
Boston stadium show of 1979
for example).

It proves a sweet enough set,
entirely typical of the well-
drilled band Marley oversaw
in his pomp (and make no
mistake. Bob ruled over his
group with an iron hand). The
rhythm section of the Barrett brothers had
always synchronised effortlessly. Family
Man’s loping basslines weaving around
Carly’s snapping rim shots. The duo were the
lynchpin around which the Wailers turned -
for much of this set Tyrone Downie’s
keyboards and the guitars of Junior Marvin
and A 1 Anderson do little more than
punctuate their rhythms, at least in this
somewhat muddy sound mix. Most of the
musical action is otherwise contained by
Marley’s vocals - always committed and
rarely less than extraordinary, even in the
midst of a gruelling tour - and the under¬
valued choral counterpoints of the I Threes,
a trio more distinguished than the usual
‘backing vocals’ description suggests, and
whose discipline allows Marley to improvise
and wander.

Though this was the ‘Kaya Tour’ - said
album had been released in March - the only
track from that record is “Easy Skanking”,
which drifts past unremarkably. Kaya was
a kick-back album. In concert, something
tougher was called for, and Marley invariably
relied on a mix of militant anthems and
greatest hits - the opening quartet of “Slave

the Family Time album... The charity we have,
Urge, focuses on children and education,
especially in poor countries, where it’s a route
out of economic and cultural deprivation. If
we’re trying to change the world through music,
start early. Don’t wait 20 years. Making Family
Time was liberating... you’re writing for kids, who
are more open-minded.

You have six! In my family I’m in the middle
where offspring are concerned [laughs].

You have also become a fashion icon according
to a photo spread in GQ. [Laughs] My wife
showed that to me yesterday. I find that really
funny. But you have to be open-minded to it,
get out your shell!

Any favourite tracks by your father? When
I was in high school the record I played was
Survival. It was after my father passed, and
that entire album was an education, a lesson
in becoming a man. INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER

Driver”, “Burnin’ And Lootin’”, “Them Belly
Full” and “The Heathen” is a salvo of anger
and defiance, after which comes a clutch of
lighter crowd-pleasers; “Rebel Music”, “I Shot
The Sheriff”, “No Woman No Cry” and “Lively
Up Yourself”, a number present in almost
every show Marley and his band played.

By 1978 other constants had emerged.
“War”, containing the words of Hailie
Selassie, was like scripture for Marley, and
he and the band had cleverly segued it into
“No More Trouble”, thus balancing the songs’
messages. “Lively Up Yourself”, a number
that had started life as languid rocksteady
back in the Bob/Bunny/Tosh era, had evolved
into a high-spirited celebration of livity. “Get
Up Stand Up” (co-written with Peter Tosh,
let’s not forget) was another ever-present, a
catchy singalong on one level that was also
combative and Rastafarian in outlook.

As the show proceeds, the numbers grow
longer, partly to allow Marley to do more
dancing and gesticulating, but also to give
the twin guitar attack of Anderson and
Marvin more space. Their squealing blues-
rock guitars had always been a bone of
contention among reggae fans, with
accusations of ‘sell-out’ not uncommon.

The squalls of guitar over the last 30 minutes
of this show certainly have their tedious
moments. The reality was that Marley was
engaged in the reinvention of reggae, and
just as black American acts like Funkadelic
had adopted rock elements, so had he.
Transforming the Wailers from a studio-stuck
vocal trio into a fully functioning band had
itself been a revolutionary act; turning
Jamaican music into something less alien
to a global audience was, for Marley, a
continuation of the same process.

His real aim, one that would never be
fulfilled in his lifetime, was to engage and
revolutionise black America, to fulfil the
prophecy of “Exodus”. That number ends
Easy Skanking... in a thunder of double beats
that the sound quality here turns into an
uninteresting thump. It isn’t really reggae
at all, but it is uniquely Bob Marley.

WILLIAM S
BURROUGHS

Nothing Here Now
But The Recordings

(reissue, 1981) dais

“Fully operational.

Even to cucumbers.”
8/10 Burroughs beat archive
raided and reissued

When Brion Gysin discovered the “cut-up”
technique at the Beat Hotel in Paris, it helped
bring literature up to speed with painting, where
montage had been used for 50 years. On this
documentary recording of tape experiments,
readings and spliced news broadcasts, originally
the final release on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial
Records, you can hear the audio application
William Burroughs made of that idea. Compiled
by Genesis P-Orridge and Peter ‘Sleazy’
Christopherson after visits to Burroughs in New
York and Lawrence, Kansas, this draws on the
writer’s audio archive, rejuvenating it with
additional editing. A little drunk in company, we
hear Burroughs cut up a “creepy letter” to “see
what it really says”. In private, he arrives at
abstract juxtapositions and moments of great
humour (“Find death. Embrace death. Bring a
halibut”), the wows and flutters of his tape like
primitive scratching. It’s strange and compelling,
as much Beat time-capsule as live art object. For
all the humour, though, it is in the closing “The
Last Words Of Hassan Sabbha” - in which
Burroughs rails against inherited money, vested
interest, the boards, syndicates and corporations
who “sell the ground from under unborn feet” -
that it becomes vengeful and transcendent.
EXTRAS: None.

JOHN ROBINSON

JULIAN COPE

Trip Advizer

LORDYATESBURY

The best of the
Archdrude’s last 15
years. Good title, too

For most people au fait
7/10 with The Archdrude, a
product subtitled “The
Very Best Of Julian Cope 1999-2014” would
most likely be a literary anthology, given the
flood of acclaimed books that culminated
in 2014 with One Three One , his first novel.
Trip Advizer, however, compiles “16 visionary
songs” from 15 years of generally neglected
albums, and reveals that Cope’s pop
imperative has somehow survived all the
contrarian strategies he imposes on it.

The likes of “Woden”, “I’m Living In The
Room They Found Saddam In” and “They
Were On Hard Drugs” have the sort of
nursery-rhyme insidiousness that flourished
at the start of Cope’s solo career; “These
Things I Know” - a memorable anthem
thinly disguised in the trappings of cosmic
folk - would have usefully adorned Fried.

The militant apostasy of that song, and
many others here, can be wearisome,
but it remains a critical part of Cope’s
wide-ranging agenda, set out in a CD
booklet (designed by daughter Avalon)
that commemorates the centenary of the
Armenian genocide, recounts the four-month
“psychedelic fallout” of a 2009 salvia trip,
and reveals, finally, his favourite Krautrock
band: “AmonDulil”!

EXTRAS: None.

JOHNMULVEY

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 91

Archive

Rediscovered!

Uncovering the underrated and overlooked

DAVID BORDEN

Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments

SPECTRUM SPOOLS

9/10

Lost classic of kaleidoscopic synth minimalism, rediscovered
and remastered...

You can’t go far these days without coming across a reissue
purported to be a landmark in the history of analog synth. Music
For Amplified Keyboard Instruments, though, is the real deal. David Borden was a friend of Bob
Moog, who he met while composer-in-residence at New York’s Ithaca City School District in the late
’60s. He and Borden struck up a relationship, and the inventor was keen to get his prototype into
the hands of a promising young composer. Borden, more musician than technician, promptly fried
much of Moog’s experimental circuitry. “But Bob thought it good,” says Borden. “He redesigned
all of the modules so that no matter how they were hooked up they still functioned.”

Borden later joked that Moog was out to idiot-proof his synthesiser, and he was the useful idiot.

But 1981’s Music For Amplified Keyboards is proof Borden grasped this instrument’s possibilities in
a way few others did. Its dense layering brings to mind a masterpiece of minimalism such as Reich’s
Music For 18 Musicians, but the sweep of its melodies is altogether something else: the perfect
collision of technology and composer.

Two pieces titled “The Continuing Story Of Counterpoint” come from a 12-part cycle Borden
toiled on for 11 years, honed with his live group, Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. “We
were the world’s first ongoing synthesiser ensemble,” says Borden. Mostly, this music was regarded
as a curio. “Later, some critic called it electronic minimalism,” says Borden. “But we never paid
attention to genres.”

Borden is proud of Music For Amplified Keyboard Instruments, but it was no commercial success
and has been out of print for years. Today, Borden has retired from teaching, but Mother Mallard is
again a going proposition - albeit, now a laptop ensemble with USB keyboards. “So I am interested
in modern technology,” he says, “and still seem to be ahead of the curve in some cases.”

LOUIS PATTISON

THE CREATION

Our Music Is Red
-With Purple
Flashes

DEMON

Vinyl re-release for
freakbeat compilation

7/10 For a whole generation of
mod revivalists and garage
rock fans, it remains a scandal that The Creation
weren’t as big as The Who or The Kinks. Like
their fellow Londoners, The Creation were
produced by US expat Shel Talmy and plied
a similarly high-octane British take on R’n’B
which was later venerated by the likes of The
Jam. With The Creation, however, the factors
that hindered them are exactly the things that
endear them to ’60s obsessives. Their singles -
even their only hit, “Painter Man” (later covered
by Boney M) - are disjointed, chaotic affairs
that sound like they were pasted together as
musique concrete experiments; while the
guitars sound utterly deranged, with Eddie
Phillips either stabbing his strings with sharp
objects or scraping them with a violin bow.

This vinyl re-release of their definitive
compilation contains all the best moments
of their sole LP (1967’s We Are Paintermeri)
and the half dozen or so 45s they released for
Polydor between ’66 and ’68. It also corrects
some of the odd stereo separation that
characterises some CD releases. The
psychedelic Edwardiana of “Can I Join Your
Band”, a punky take on “Cool Jerk” and the
proto punk “Making Time” all sound
particularly fresh.

EXTRAS: None.

IOHNLEWIS

DR FEELGOOD

I’m A Man: The
Best Of The Wilko
Johnson Years
1974-1977

PARLOPHONE

Worthwhile, if
7/10 inessential, compilation
from 1970s R’n’B kings

Given the glut of compilations already out
there, it’s safe to say the world really doesn’t
need another Feelgoods best-of. Here it is
nonetheless, released, no doubt, to coincide
with Wilko Johnson’s commercial rebirth
(Going Back Home, last year’s surprise Top 3
hit with Roger Daltrey) and his recovery from
the cancer that was first diagnosed as terminal.
FmAMan... is essentially a truncated version
of 2012’s four-disc box All Through The City,
cramming 16 tracks under its roof. The
omissions are pretty startling (no sign of “She
Does It Right” or “All Through The City”, for
starters); instead it’s a democratic spread of the
band’s four albums with Wilko. Regardless of
familiarity, the urgent fizz of “Roxette” still
sounds genuinely thrilling, as does one of
Johnson’s final efforts, “Lights Out”. And if
Talking Heads ever borrowed a template for
their own strain of jerky guitar-pop, then
“Cheque Book” could easily have been it.
Johnson’s disdain for heroics is admirable,
the live version of “Back In The Night” being
the closest he gets to a solo. Overall, a terse
reminder that he and Lee Brilleaux were
as belligerent a frontline as ’70s rock
threw up.

EXTRAS: None.

ROB HUGHES

92 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

Archive

BC GILBERT/

G LEWIS

3^4 (reissue, 1980)

SUPERIOR VIADUCT

Mesmeric lo-fi
minimalism by
members of Wire

By 1980, English post-punk
band Wire had reached a
seeming point of no return. As their albums
mutated from brief flashes of lightning - the
stop-start shocks of Pink Flag - to the almost
Floydian density of 154, they increasingly
chafed at the limitations placed upon them by
the music industry, and the expectations of
onlookers. Perhaps the moment of greatest
confrontation was their Electric Ballroom gig,
released (and recently re-issued) as Document &
Eyewitness, where they premiered dislocated
new songs, of sorts, amid post-Dadaist
performance art interventions. In many ways,
it was the group members’ art-school history
come back to haunt them. Gilbert and Lewis, in
particular, would further mine this area, with
projects like Dome, Cupola, P’o and Duet Emmo,
and their album, 3R4, originally released by
4 AD, where the duo, aided by Angela Conway
(aka AC Marias), artist Russell Mills, and bass
player Davyd Boyd, scratch out two percussive
interludes, both entitled “Barge Calm”, as
punctuation points for the album’s two long
pieces, “3,4” and “R”. Often using simple riffs
from Boyd’s bass as pivot, Lewis and Gilbert
move blocks of grainy, low-fidelity noise around
the metaphoric room, their compositional
methods abstruse, the studio their muse.
EXTRAS: None.

JONDALE

8/10

JELLYFISH

Bellybutton/

Spilt Milk

OMNIVORE

Bay Area power-pop
in excelsis

Unshaken by the prevailing
winds of grunge, alt.rock and
dance culture, Jellyfish’s
arrival in 1990 couldn’t have
been more conspicuous,
driven by ah things retro and
decked out like extras from
H.R. Pufnstuf. Not that it
fazed them one bit. Debut LP
Bellybutton was a glorious
rush of candy-coloured
guitar-pop, loaded with big
hooks and keen echoes of
Cheap Trick, XTC and The Zombies. Such was
the quality of writers Andy Sturmer and Roger
Manning (“The Man I Used To Be”; “The King Is
Half-Undressed”; “Bedspring Kiss”) that guitarist
Jason Falkner hardly got a look-in, prompting him
to quit after the accompanying tour. Two years in
the making, follow-up Spilt Milk (1993) was more
elaborate, Sturmer and Manning creating
sumptuous arrangements and strafing it ah with
fuzz guitar. The result is a compelling hybrid of
Bacharach, Queen and The Beach Boys. It’s no
surprise that it sometimes feels overloaded,
though there’s plenty to celebrate, not least the
gorgeous “Russian Hill”.

EXTRAS: Bellybutton has 26 bonus tracks,

including demos and live cuts from
LA and Wembley. SpiltMilkhas 25 extras: demos,
radio sessions and fan club-only releases.

ROB HUGHES

8/10

KANSAS

Miracles Out
Of Nowhere

SONY

The peak years of
prog’s wayward sons

All round, it’s a fairly unjust
6/10 title. Topeka, Kansas isn’t
exactly nowhere, and the
success of the city’s most famous export - this
boogie-turned-prog/soft rock band can’t
completely be attributed to divine intervention.
As this compilation (including a full-length
documentary DVD charting their 40-year
career) makes plain, this was a band with
serious chops. Lauded by their peers as highly
accomplished musicians and scoring Top 20 hits
with “Dust In The Wind” - which began as a
finger-picking exercise for guitarist-songwriter
Kerry Livgren - and magnificently harmonised,
AOR radio staple “Carry On Wayward Son”, the
sextet have nevertheless been sidelined by
history. True, Robbie Steinhardt’s demon violin
is very much of its time (“The Pilgrimage” is
especially testing) and their ’80s transformation
into peddlers of air-brushed balladry is
regrettable, but Kansas endured through
countless lineup changes and, despite vocalist/
songwriter Steve Walsh’s retirement last year,
tour still. Wisely, this LP focuses on their 1974-
’77 peak, although the dialogue interludes that
help tell the band’s story are intrusive. It’s
unlikely to convert the novice, but listen to
sprawling, 10-minute opus “Song For America”
and you will suspect Suf jan Stevens to have
more than a nodding acquaintance with it.
EXTRAS: None.

SHARON O’CONNELL

JAMES

Laid/Wah Wah
Deluxe Edition

UMC

James’ first outings
with Eno, reunited as
a double-album

7/10 After spending most of
1992 touring - including
a headline show at Glastonbury and an
unplugged US tour opening for Neil Young -
Tim Booth and co had a backlog of around 350
songs by the time they entered Peter Gabriel’s
Real World studios in February 1993. With Brian
Eno as producer, they ended up with what was
initially intended as a double album - one
“song-based” disc (Laid) and a looser, more
improvisational companion (eventually held
over for release until late 1994 as Wah Wah).
Eno’s presence is more subtle on Laid, where
you can hear him assisting an Edge-like
“hands-free guitar” line on the slow-burning
opener “Out To Get You”, or a stadium-rock
expansiveness to their folk whimsy on
“Sometimes”, but Booth’s wry lyrics (“J’m a
member of an ape-like race/At the asshole end
of the 20th Century”) still have room to breathe.
Eno is much more evident on Wah Wah. Indeed
many tracks resemble U2’s Zooropa, recorded
a few weeks later but released earlier. You can
almost hear the Oblique Strategy cards being
deployed on the glitchy “Jam J” (“Honour thy
error as a hidden intention”) and on the metallic
pulse of “Honest Joe”, while the howls of “Arabic
Agony” are rich with Eno’s “direct-inject anti¬
jazz ray gun”.

EXTRAS: None.

JOHNLEWIS

REVELATIONS

“Wobble!” James’ Jim Glennie
on working with Brian Eno

^ James were collectively shocked when
Brian Eno rang them in response to a 1992
demo tape, and was keen to produce
them. Until then, James sessions had been
tormented rituals. “We needed Eno’s playful
approach,” says bassist Jim Glennie. “While
we rehearsed he’d hold up a card for a single
bandmember: ‘STOP’, ‘WOBBLE’, ‘CHANGE
KEY’, ‘TURN UP'. It completely changed how
you worked.” The relationship between Laid.
and Wah Wah , says Glennie, was similar to
that between U2’s Achtung Baby and Zooropa
- the second being a by-product of the first.
“Our songwriting process was to laboriously
whittle down our jam sessions. Brian, however,
loved our jamming. With Wah Wah he’d
record our jams, join in, and then get engineer
Markus Dravs to experiment with the tapes.

It was his way of taking our mind offthe‘big
songs’. He would say: “Always aim to do two
albums and you’ll end up with at least one!”
JOHNLEWIS

LAIBACH

Spectre

(reissue, 2014)

MUTE

Slovenian “pop” stars’
remodelled eighth

The reissue of any record
7/10 just 13 months after the
original suggests hubris
and optimism in equal measure, but if Laibach
are known for anything other than their robo-
trance take on “The Final Countdown”, it’s for
doing their own (often confrontational) thing.
Anyhow, the focus of this deluxe edition is a full
album of remixes (also available separately)
from the likes of Marcel Dettmann, Diamond
Version and fellow Slovenian Gramatik. Against
a backdrop of chilly martial disco, Spectre has
plenty to say about oppressive political systems
and those who brave loss of liberty or life by
challenging them, but the nine Spectremix
edits defy expectations of severely minimal,
industrio-techno gloom. In iTurk’s hands,
“Koran” becomes a rapturous, Technicolor rave-
up, while Gramatik’s take on “Eat Liver!” goes
down the squelch-heavy, disco-house route,
and for his epic rinse of “The Whistleblowers”
(one of two here), Berghain’s resident DJ
Dettmann lays a hypnotic, three-note loop over
a compelling techno beat - and omits the
original’s whistle.

EXTRAS: Five bonus tracks, including an
adaptation of Serge Gainsbourg’s
“Love On The Beat”, a live version of same,
recorded at London’s Tate Modern and a spin
on Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave
Is Kept Clean”.

SHARON O’CONNELL

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 93

Archive

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Demon Box

RUNEGRAMMOFON

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2014 synth curio gets
vinyl upgrade

Multi-disc reissue of
early-’90S behemoth

7 *

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8/10 year via io8op, Lnrdcroy
is part of the improbable
micro-scene in Vancouver that puts out
sunkissed Balearic nu-disco as if it wasn’t
murkily drizzling half the year (see also: the
superb Mood Hut label). The least successful
tracks here are a pair of awkwardly rigid
pastiches of early ’90s breakbeat house, but
when the tempo dips and the beats right
themselves, it becomes gorgeous. Boards Of
Canada and early Aphex are clear touchstones,
as poignant, mildewed chords merge into each
other - most beautifully on the drowsy waltz
“Ad In The Paper” - while “Sunrise Market”
could have been made by Prins Thomas or
Studio in that other bleak outpost of disco,
Scandinavia. But there’s a definite North
American sensibility, with the loose noodling
and bleached lo-fidelity down an underground
line from James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Mark
McGuire et al. “I Met You On BC Ferries” is the
highest point, an Afrobeat tattoo pattering
under a beautiful, boiled-wool melody, with
ever more synth lines creeping to join it. The
US chillwave scene has had plenty of chancers
muddying synths with weak songwriting -
Lnrdcroy wisely focuses on pulses and
psychedelics, creating a very Pacific
Northwestern take on dance.

EXTRAS: None.

BENBEAUMONT-THOMAS

8/10 decent, if unspectacular,
jam band with a thing

for American blues and metal. All that changed
with 1993’s Demon Box , their third album,
which saw the Norwegians forsake the
power trio format with the addition of Helge
‘Deathprod’ Sten and his bank of noisy
electronic effects. Cue monster blowouts,
freeform psychedelia and a whole new sense of
exploratory otherness. Expanded to its intended
double-LP size (the record label truncated the
original to fit onto a single CD), Demon Box now
comes with restored versions of “Gutwrench”,
“Dr Who” and the 11-minute “Mountain”. Its
most striking moments, however, remain the
same, namely the colossal title track, the
oscillating space-folk of “Tuesday Morning”
and a droney cover of Moondog’s “All Is
Loneliness”. Disc Three consists of a couple of
EPs that followed the album’s release, with a
freaky version of Jefferson Airplane’s “The
House At Pooneil Corners”. And while Disc Four
(outtakes, rarities and live cuts) is likely to
appeal to completists only, it’s worth hearing
for wiggy takes of the Grateful Dead’s “Mason’s
Children” and an extrapolation of The
Groundhogs’ “Cherry Red” that makes fair use
of a cowbell. Disc Five, meanwhile, is a live DVD
from Groningen in September ’93.

EXTRAS: None.

ROB HUGHES

PRIMITIVES

Galore: Deluxe
Edition

CHERRY RED

Chart-topping
Coventry quartet’s
secret last stand,

8/10 vastly expanded

Fizzy, irrepressibly
melodic, good-natured, with a fistful of
mega-catchy songs, the Primitives were
everything one might want out of a pop combo
in 1991. In the trend-obsessed crossfire of
Madchester and grunge, though, they barely
registered. After a spate of ’80s hits, Galore was
album number three - inexplicably delayed
a year by RCA - the last gasp of the group’s
original incarnation. With an up-front radio¬
ready sound (perhaps its ignominious doom),
predicated on a funky beat here, a jangly guitar
there, the songs are impeccable. Charismatic
singer Tracy Tracy comes on like a more
versatile Debbie Harry, delivering devastating
hooks with aplomb. “You Are The Way” -
akin to an amped-up Shirelles sent through
a meat grinder - should have been a hit; the
gentle jangle of “Slip Away” is simply drop-
dead gorgeous. Meanwhile, “Earth Thing”,
punk-funk wound taut with an insane guitar
onslaught by main songwriter Paul Court,
argues vehemently against perceptions that
the Primitives were mere lightweights.

EXTRAS: Eighteen extra tracks, ranging
from import bonus tracks,
single remixes, and almost an hour of live
tracks, plus some fine contextual liner notes
by journalist Andy Davis.

LUKE TORN

SHELBY
LYNNE

I Am Shelby
Lynne

ROUNDER

Expanded anniversary
reissue of US singer-
writer’s career landmark

Fifteen years ago,
Alabama-born Shelby Lynne walked
out on a career as a manufactured Nashville
pin-up to make a record that was “real and
true”. After years of corporate manipulation,
the self-assertive title of I Am Shelby Lynne
said it all and revealed a sensuous and poetic
singer-songwriter with a seductive Southern
drawl, more Lucinda Williams than Reba
McEntire. The album won her a Grammy and
while she’s continued to release impressive
and challenging records since, it remains her
unrivalled masterpiece. Vaulting effortlessly
across country, Southern rock, blues and jazz,
and combining a warm intimacy and sassy
sex appeal with some profoundly dark themes,
the songs continue to sound as fresh today as
when they were minted.

EXTRAS: With Lynne in such a rich vein,

one always suspected the sessions
had produced more quality material than
she could use - and so it proves. Every one
of six previously unreleased tracks could’ve
shone on the original release, from the sultry
“Bless The Fool” with its moody strings to the
dream-pop of “Wind”, and from the brazen
funk of “Should Have Been Better” to the
confessional rawness of “Miss You Sissy”,
addressed to sister Allison Moorer.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

8/10

HOW TO BUY...

SIMPLE MINDS

From proto techno to shimmering pop

Empires And Dance

ARISTA, 1980

Working hard and fast since their
11979 debut, with an amphetamine-
1 addled Kerr at the helm, the Minds
came into their own on this third album. While
the proto techno delirium of “Rooms” pushed
boundaries, the sequencer strafed “I Travel”
was an instant classic on an album highlighting
a cultivated taste for excitement and paranoia.

7/10

IP

M Sons And Fascination/
W* Sister Feelinas Call

VIRGIN, 1981

! Three years before U2 hooked up
with Brian Eno, the Minds’ liaison
with prog-icon producer Steve Hillage mined
mutual Krautrock inspirations, gave vent to their
exotic melodicism, shimmering synth-pop and
the rabid mean-eyed funk of “Sweat In Bullet”.
Originally released as two separate albums.

8/10

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8*

( 81 - 82 - 85 - 84 ) VIRGIN,1982

A newly abundant and optimistic
mood brought big hits with the
erotic crooning of “Someone
Somewhere In Summertime” and the billowing
swagger of “Promised You A Miracle”. With
Kerr’s high-flown romanticism, it’s a resplendent
’80s highpoint._

9/10

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SIMPLE MINDS

Sparkle In The Rain
Special Editions

VIRGIN

Remastered five-disc
boxset for Kerr and
co’s 1984 stadium
breakthrough

With U2 producer
Steve Lilly white at the helm, Sparkle was
where the Minds flexed their rock muscle and
defiantly mapped out the big music. Lyrically
more direct than ever, channelling a sense
of awe and revelation, the impassioned Kerr
rides a newly liberated powerhouse sound
foregrounding mighty Mel Gaynor’s drums
and Charlie Burchill’s searing and calamitous
guitar lines. The prescient “Waterfront”
provided the anthemic focal point, but all
around, a heightened drama was at work. Kerr,
indefatigable on the giddy high jinx of “Speed
Your Love To Me” (where the late Kirsty McColl
provides vocal foil) welcomes vast peaks and
invokes heady visions amid the shimmering
atmospherics of “White Hot Day”. Time has
been rather kinder to the Minds’ vaulting
ambition than more successful contemporaries
- Sparkle's compositions’ strong structure and
valiant earthiness, particular evident on the
ebullient live cuts, earths the grandiose
leanings. Majoring in resourcefulness and
imagination, Sparkle marks a key ’80s
transformation - from post-punk new pop
into Teflon-coated rock powerhouse.

EXTRAS: Alternative edits, Radio 1 session,

February ’84 Barrowlands live show,
and DVD with 5.1 mix and promo videos.
GAVINMARTIN

94 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

BRIAN COOKE/REDFERNS

CONTENTS

ROXY MUSIC 1972

ROXY

MUSIC

The Studio
Albums

VIRGIN/BACKTO BLACK VINYL

All eight, from dazzling debut to
vaporous swansong. By Andy Gill

FOR YOUR PLEASURE 1973

ROXY MUSIC

(fee < Irita

7/10

ROXY MUSIC WERE
not best served by the
mid-’8os shift to CDs
and especially the
subsequent move to
mp3 files. At one end
of their career, this
condensation process
made their earlier,
more experimental
recordings sound
tinny and hollow;
at the other end, it

rendered the lush, expansive sound of the later Roxy
thin and pasty, a sort of flock-wallpaper version of
their velvet smoothness. So this set of i8og vinyl
albums is to be welcomed, even though it charts
more clearly than ever the gradual artistic
desiccation that came hand-in-hand with
commercial success.

Sadly, the restored analog warmth can’t really
surmount Pete Sinfield’s odd production of Roxy’s
debut album, which features the drums upfront
and punchy, but leaves the other elements less
confidently presented in the mix. But it’s a
remarkable record nonetheless, with the
track title “Re-make/Re-model”
virtually constituting a manifesto of
the group’s eclectic, postmodern
approach, which featured
alongside the modernist strains
of tracks such as “Ladytron”
hints and tints of doowop,
cabaret and even country,
and also drew influences
from the film, fashion and art
worlds. Bits of it might have

STRANDED 1973

COUNTRY LIFE 1974

SIREN 7975

MANIFESTO 1979

AVALON 1982

seemed familiar, but en masse it
sounded unlike anything else -
as did Bryan Ferry’s mannered
crooning, which was a hyper-real
representation of the emotional
ballast commonly associated
with popular music, from Bing
Crosby to Marvin Gaye.

Chris Thomas’ production
makes the follow-up For Your Pleasure much more
assured and propulsive - “Do The Strand” leaps
from the speakers with solidity and purpose, as
does “Editions Of You”, with its succinct solos by
Andy Mackay, Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera. “For
Your Pleasure” and the nine-minute “The Bogus
Man” reflect the influence of Can, but it’s the blow¬
up-doll devotional “In Every Dream Home A
Heartache” that really pushes the pop-song
envelope, shifting from eerie spatiality to crazed
climax, with the false fade and phased return
cementing its abstruse weirdness.

Following Eno’s replacement by Curved Air
violinist Eddie Jobson, Stranded and Country Life
offered a focusing of forces on tracks like “Street
Life” and “All I Want Is You”, which extended Roxy’s
run of hit singles. Their eclecticism was still
in operation - as witness the New Orleans second-
line shuffle and gospel choir underscoring Ferry’s
testifying on “Psalm” - but the notion “strange
ideas mature with age”{ from “The Thrill Of It All”)
effectively defined Roxy’s developing sound
which, despite Manzanera’s terse, edgy guitar
striations, was becoming more solid and stable.
Ferry’s delivery of hipster slang like “Stay hip/Keep
cool”, meanwhile, was still abundantly freighted
with irony.

But it was the lumpy funk-rock of “Casanova”,
with Ferry’s sardonically punning line about “Now
you're nothing but second hand in glove with second
rate” that hinted at what was to come on 1975’s Siren.
“Love Is The Drug” irresistibly refined this chic
funk style, but the album overall seems sluggish
and weak. Even “Both Ends Burning”, the LP’s

FLESH* BLOOD 7980

other standout, lacks impetus,
and it’s no surprise that they
decided to take a four-year hiatus:
the band sounds wiped out,
ground down, used up.

By the time they returned, punk
had employed its scorched-earth
flamethrower, and the fresh buds
of new-wave energy were poking
through the ruins. Perhaps this explains the
uncertainty of Manifesto, an album split between
the fizzy, brittle sound of “Trash” and the more
expansive, funk-jazz style of the title-track and
“Stronger Through The Years”, with its fretless bass
and prog-scape noodling. Ferry may have claimed,
on “Manifesto”, that he was “for a life around the
corner, that takes you by surprise”, but the use of
sessioneers like Steve Ferrone, RickMarotta and
Richard Tee indicated the more mainstream
territory being mapped out. “Dance Away” was
divinely mousse-light, but the album’s other single,
“Angel Eyes”, was stodgy rather than elegant, limp
rather than louche.

The following year, Flesh + Blood became the
album which crystallised the synthetic glamour
and bogus elegance of the nascent New Romantic
movement, offering a template for the likes of Duran
Duran, Spandau Ballet and ABC. There was a wafer-
thin charm about “Oh Yeah” and “Over You”,
singles almost entirely lacking in ambition; but the
band were struggling for decent material, to the
extent of including dilute covers of “In The Midnight
Hour” and “Eight Miles High”, the latter re-cast as
sylph-like funk - it fits the Roxy aesthetic, but
conveys none of the spaced-out alienation of The
Byrds’ original.

The band’s swansong came with 1982’s Avalon,
the sleekest entry in their catalogue, so vaporous
that the title-track could be the soundtrack to a
scent advert, while Phil Manzanera’s guitar, for
so long the supplier of Roxy’s more exploratory
frissons, reached on “Take A Chance With Me”
a rarefied, emotive quality akin to Norwegian
angstmeister Ter je Rypdal. But the true
signifier of the band’s fate could be
found in its most crucial

component, Bryan Ferry’s
voice, which had lost all
trace of the irony and bite
of early Roxy. Trapped
with the enervated
swoon of a jaded
lothario, he had
effectively become what
he once parodied.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 95

Archive

JOHN COLTRANE

So Many Things: The European Tour 1961

ACROBAT

9/10

IF YOU THINK Dylan going electric or the punk revolution
caused a stir in the music press, you should have been
around when John Coltrane brought his quintet to the UK
to start a 27-city European tour in November 1961. Bob
Dawbarn, the Melody Maker's representative, returned
from the opening show at the Gaumont State in Kilburn,
North London, with a piece that ran under a headline screaming: “WHATHAPPENED?”

Dawbarn was a knowledgable fan of modern jazz - including the music of Dizzy Gillespie,
whose band topped the bill that night - but Coltrane’s new sounds had him “baffled, bothered
and bewildered”, reflecting the opinion of a large chunk of the audience unready for the
changes jazz was starting to undergo.

Part of the problem was that Coltrane’s UK album release schedule lagged far behind the US.
The fans who knew him from his work with Miles Davis and his own earlier records as a leader
were expecting a tenor saxophonist who expanded the rulebook but did not rip it to shreds.
They had not heard his latest Atlantic album, My Favourite Things, containing a version of the
title song in which he used the major-to-minor shifts of Richard Rodgers’ harmless little
melody (from The Sound Of Music) as the vehicle not only for his discovery of the soprano
saxophone but for his assault on jazz’s established limits of harmony and timescale.

No fewer than six extended versions of the song are included in So Many Things: The
European Tour 1961, a set of four CDs on the Acrobat label compiled from two shows each in
Paris and Stockholm and one apiece in Copenhagen and Helsinki. The sound quality varies
from patchy to excellent, but the flame of discovery burns throughout, nowhere more
thrillingly than on the second Paris version of “My Favourite Things”, where Coltrane attacks
his long solo from a variety of different angles, with increasingly jaw-dropping results.

Other highlights include a gorgeous version of “Naima” featuring the bass clarinet of Eric
Dolphy, who is also heard to advantage on alto saxophone and flute. McCoy Tyner (piano),
Reggie Workman (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) show themselves completely attuned to the
rapidly evolving needs of a leader who would die in 1967 without having visited the UK again.
This diligently compiled set is as close as we’ll get to a souvenir of his profound effect on
European listeners.

RICHARD WILLIAMS

STELLA

Stella: Expanded
Edition

RPM INTERNATIONAL

Curious parody and
avant-pop from French
’60s teen star

7/10 French singer Stella

Vander (nee Zelcer) cut
her first single at 12 in 1963 and released her
first LP in ’67, before abandoning pop for jazz
and then joining French proggers Magma. Her
departure was not unexpected. Stella had
made her name recording smart, satirical pop
songs that sent up the ye-ye style that had
swept Europe in the wake of The Beatles, and
this had a limited shelf-life. She was operating
firmly with a strong French tradition of gleeful
peer mockery - and one that would soon be
followed by Serge Gainsbourg - but also one
that would easily get tiresome even when the
music was so fabulous. This 26-track CD
collects her debut album plus other EP releases
from the era, and includes genteel crackers like
“Gaspard” and “Le Vieux Banjo” alongside
splendidly assured pop songs like “Je Ne Peux
Plus Te Voir En Peinture” and “Poesie 67”.
“J’Achetes Des Disques Americains” and
“Beatnicks D’Occasion”, the latter a 1960s
take on “Weekender”, offer a good insight
into her humour, while the brilliant “Si Vous
Connaissez Quelque Chose...”, is a sort of
garage rocker featuring cut-up montages
of animal sounds and “La Marseillaise”
that shows she had a sense of adventure
as well as one of mischief.

EXTRAS: Sleevenotes.

PETER WATTS

UB40

Present Arms -
Deluxe

UMC

Expanded reissue
of socially engaged
second album

8/10 Back in the days

when these Brummie
boys tackled Thatcher, race riots and the
indefatigable medicinal properties of
“sensimilla”, UB40 could give The Specials a
run for their money when it came to combining
socio-political suss with quality sounds. Their
second album, released in 1981, is a vibrant stew
of reverb-drenched reggae and righteous
opinioneering. Top 10 single “One In Ten” (a
reference to the West Midlands’ 10 per cent
unemployment rate) epitomises the album’s
heavy, mid-paced melodicism. The sweetly
soulful “Don’t Slow Down” has a deceptively
spiky underbelly, “Silent Witness” smuggles an
uncompromising vision of urban hopelessness
underneath its mellifluous groove, but there’s
light(er) relief in a trio of instrumentals, while
“Lamb’s Bread” is a silly, squelchy demand to
legalise the herb. UB4o’s fourth album, the
hugely successful covers LP, Labour Of Love,
has also been given the deluxe reissue
treatment, but by then the band’s muse
was showing clear signs of fatigue. On
Present Arms, it burns hard and bright.

EXTRAS: The companion album, Present Arms
In Dub, originally released towards
the end of 1981, alongside a third disc of
unreleased BBC sessions and live tracks,
also from 1981.

GRAEME THOMSON

96 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

Archive

VARIOUS

ARTISTS

Next Stop Soweto
Vol 4: Zulu Rock,
Afro-Disco &
Mbaqanga 1975-85

STRUT

8/10 Rocking the townships
like never before...

The latest in Strut’s ongoing archive series
revisiting the sounds of the ghetto during the
long, cruel years of apartheid should nail once
and for all the myth that international isolation
and internal oppression meant black South
African township music developed in an
environment hermetically sealed from the
influence of the outside world. While previous
volumes have concentrated on distinctively
indigenous South African styles in the
Masekela/Makeba tradition, the fourth set finds
Soweto rocking to a more international and
eclectic beat. Isaac & The Sakie Special Band
show that Chic’s influence in the early 1980s
reached as far as the shebeens of Johannesburg.
The Movers’ “Soweto Disco” evokes The Average
White Band. Almon Memela’s “Things We Do
In Soweto” borrows its DNA from The Fatback
Band. The gospel-fired disco of Harari’s “Give”
would have moved dancefloors all over the
world if we’d been allowed to hear it, while
Kabassa’s Zulu-riffing and duelling lead guitars
improbably owe more to the prog-rock of
Wishbone Ash than to the Afrobeat of Osibisa.

A bit of a shock for world music cultural purists,
but a thrilling eye-opener for the rest of us.
EXTRAS: Informative booklet with track notes,
evocative photos and sleeve artwork.

NIGEL WILLIAMSON

PETE WIGGS

Saint Etienne
Present How We
Used To Live

HEAVENLY FILMS

Back, further back: St Et’s
hymn to London, scored

8/10 As the grand arc of Saint

Etienne’s career comes into
focus, they’re starting to look more and more like
a secret barometer tracking pop music’s socio¬
cultural complexities. Their early ’90s music
captured the thrill of acid house and the alluring
oddness of techno; later, they’d detour through
elegant modernism, sleek electronica, arms-
aloft house, and the clarity of modern pop
production. Beside that narrative, though, runs
their constant eulogising of London, one of pop’s
pressure points, and interest that has blossomed
in recent years, due to collaborations with the
BFI. On How We Used To Live - a film named
after one of the group’s finest singles - two
members of Saint Etienne, Wiggs and pop
historian Bob Stanley, along with collaborators
Paul Kelly and Travis Elborough, re-edited old
Central Office Of Information films into a poised
narrative of everyday life in the city. Wiggs’
soundtrack captures the tone of the film
perfectly - an admixture of the nostalgic, the
futuristic, the cautiously optimistic and the
quotidian. Wiggs uses classic tropes from
soundtrack and library music - minimal
electronics, simple, plunking double bass,
percussion that sashays across the stereo
spectrum - and effortlessly makes new the
London we knew.

EXTRAS: None.

JONDALE

Reflecting on his group St Etienne’s
intensification of interest in the life and lives of
London, Pete Wiggs says, “Because London is
a vibrant city it means it is always changing, for
better or worse, and documenting some
of those changes feels necessary.”

With their most recent film, How We Used.

To Live, Wiggs and Bob Stanley, along with
collaborators Paul Kelly and Travis Elborough,
were looking “for images that told stories,
showed unfamiliar views of the everyday and
things that had changed beyond recognition.
The film covers the 1950s to early 1980s. I
wanted the music to incorporate elements
from those decades without pastiche or being
period accurate to a particular scene.”

It’s a fascination that has long been part of St
Etienne’s music: in many ways, their LPs play
out as psychogeographies of the changing
fates of the city. “When we started out in
1990 , we’d just moved to London,” Wiggs
continues, “having grown up on the outskirts
and been caught in its spell since childhood.
We were obsessed with it and the freedom of
leaving home and being in a band.” JONDALE

BILLY DEE
WILLIAMS

Let’s

Misbehave

EXPLORE MULTIMEDIA

Early’6os curio
from renowned
6/10 American thesp

Years before he starred
alongside Diana Ross in Lady Sings The Blues
and Mahogany, and later as Lando Calrissian in
two Star Wars films ( The Empire Strikes Back
and Return Of The Jedi), Billy Dee Williams was
a stage actor with one eye on a singing career.
This fascinating, if flawed, exercise in sub-
Sinatra swing dates from 1961 and was first
issued as part of Prestige Records’ Lively Arts
series of experimental releases. Williams
certainly had a rich voice, far more mature than
his 23 years might suggest, nestled in the cosy
arrangements of George Cory. The folksy,
largely unadorned “A Taste Of Honey” fares
best, lifted from the Broadway play in which
Williams had recently drawn positive reviews.
And he does get to flex his tonsils on more
strident tunes like “Red Sun Blues”. But most
of it, from Cole Porter’s title track through to
“Life’s A Holiday” and Johnny Mercer’s “I
Wonder What Became Of Me”, takes the form
of wee-small-hours jazz, all brushed drums,
tinkly piano and Williams’ wounded
balladeering. The album’s easy sophistication
might well have been enough to warrant a
follow-up. Alas, the Prestige-Lively Arts label
failed to set the tills ringing and opted to cut
its losses soon after.

EXTRAS: None.

ROBHUGHES

COMING

NEXT

MONTH...

^ Those of a folky
persuasion are well
served next month.
There’s the new one
by Conor O’Brien’s
band, Villagers, who
have managed to find a
dark and even Elbowy
kind of path through acoustic music. Maybe
more persuasively, out the back in the Archive
section there’s some compendious historical
work afoot with a boxset compiling the work
of "otheringay - Sandy Denny’s band with
her husband Trevor Lucas. Not only that,
there’s a new remastered issue for the first
album by >ert Jansch. From cover image to
spellbinding music, Jansch’s 1965 debut helped
focus the idea of the British guitar troubadour,
its technical wizardry and crisp, passionate
songwriting rendering its maker a role model
for a whole generation of players.

Back after a while away, frontman Jim James
detained on a variety of other musical and
curatorial projects, My Morning Jacket
also return with a long-gestated record. The
first since 2011’s Circuital , The Waterfall is
produced by Tucker Martine, and the lengthy
sessions seem to have produced not just this
record but a follow-up, too. In other news,
there’s a new one from Srian Wilson, and
the superb new Blake Mills-produced effort
of much-changed garage/

R&B from the all-new
Alabama Shakes.

JOHN.ROBINSON.101@FREELANCE.TIMEINC.COM

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THIS MONTH: JOE STRUMMER ON THE RUN DEAD MAN LEVIATHAN

PIEDRA

ROJA

WWW.PORTALDISC.COM

Chile’s hippy revolution
uncovered. By Andy Gill

THE “WOODSTOCK
GENERATION” was not
confined just to North
America and Europe. Across
the world, countercultural
ripples among the young
caused ructions in societies
normally bound by strict
traditional ways. After the
Woodstock film was screened
in Chile, 19-year-old student Jorge Gomez was
inspired to put on a free festival, Piedra Roja, which
would become an emblematic moment in the life of
the nation. Taking place on a stretch of land in the
hills outside eastern Santiago between October 10
and 12,1970, it seemed to presage the election the
following month of Salvador Allende as president.
“We had an intuition that the world could be
different,” says actress and playwright Malucha
Pinto, who attended the festival. “A world in which
liberty, solidarity, community, understanding and
justice existed.” Through copious interviews with
participants and scraps of period footage, this
fascinating documentary paints a picture not just
of the festival but of the social conditions which
spawned it, and the repercussions which followed.

In the late ’6os, the Chilean music scene was on
the cusp of change. Bands like Los Ripios, Trapos
and Blops were beginning to explore the
boundaries between pop, traditional Chilean music
and more exploratory modes, producing a sort of
local variant of Tropicalia with flute-based folk-rock
and harmonies. Los Jaivas ditched their bowties
and gold-buttoned blazers in favour of a more
freewheeling look, and changed their sound
accordingly: within months, they had produced
their first “symphonic” work, a Zappa-esque piece
“based on sonic distortion”. And inspired by
Lennon & Ono’s Two Virgins, the band Aguaturbia
decided that they, too, would appear naked on
their album sleeve. It was a sensation, instantly
outselling every album in Chilean history. “We
were young, naive, talented and marginalised,”
laughs singer Denise Corales today.

The hippy scene in Santiago was split between
two locations: rich, middle-class kids tended to stay
in the upmarket suburb of Coppelia, while the more
militant leftists, intellectuals and lower-class
congregated in the Parque Forestal, across from
the Military Academy, whose inmates would
sometimes cause trouble for the hippies, notably in
one brutal, bloody confrontation when hundreds of
sword-wielding cadets put the peaceniks to flight.
There was constant underlying tension: on other
occasions, Blops would arrive to perform on the
back of a flatbed truck, until the police turned up
to disperse the crowd with water-cannon.

The establishment were genuinely scared of
this new cultural shift, particularly the way rich,
bourgeois kids were attracted to hippiedom.
Engineer and astrologer Caroli Aparacio tells of
how his professor recruited him as a spy, to
infiltrate the burgeoning hippy movement and

8/10

discover what its motives and aims were. It was the
kind of request that, once made, can’t be refused.
But when he infiltrated the hippies at Parque
Forestal, he soon went native and joined them.

So when Jorge Gomez decided to stage a free
festival, he was preaching to a swelling
congregation - far bigger than he had anticipated.
The naive teenager was fundamentally ill-
equipped for the challenge. Sure, he was able to
persuade Coca-Cola to provide a stage (12ft x 20ft!)
in return for the drinks franchise; and while his
mother wrote blank cheques to cover local damage,
and the cost of bringing electricity from a pylon 3km
away, he was soon overwhelmed by events. There
was no PA. The entire lighting system was one bulb
in a coffee-can. The single cable couldn’t carry
enough electricity to power bands’ equipment fully.
Some performers could find neither the tiny stage,
nor any organiser, and departed without playing.

It was chaos. But a kindly chaos. Bands jammed
enthusiastically, the crowd eagerly expressed the
peace and love vibe, and as at festivals throughout
the years, youngsters had their first tastes of sex
and drugs and rock’n’roll. It was front-page news,
and by the second day, bus companies had
organised trips for gawkers to come see the hippies.
Spotting an opportunity, van-loads of booze-sellers
and prostitutes arrived at the site. The following
day, the police arrived and shut the festival down.

The repercussions were quick in coming.

Questions were asked in parliament. There was
widespread persecution. Hippies became outcasts,
attacked by both sides - by the church and right¬
wingers as degenerates, by leftists as bourgeois.
Jorge Gomez was expelled from school, and forced
to leave home, escaping to establish a commune
in the mountains. As Allende’s socialist policies
began to bite, poverty spread. Suddenly, it got
“hard, ugly and conflictive”.

A few years later, it got even harder and uglier.
Surprised at the absence of traffic in the mountains,
Gomez and a pal jumped on a motorbike and drove
down towards Santiago, only to find machine-guns
facing them in the road. A military coup had
resulted in the probable murder of Allende, and
Pinochet was in power. Narrowly avoiding being
killed or imprisoned, Gomez cut his hair and
disappeared back into the mountains. Other
musicians fled for Argentina or Ecuador or Europe,
taking advantage of the junta’s immediate focus
on hunting leftist activists rather than hippies.
Those that didn’t get out got hurt. But the
documentary closes on a more positive note,
with young musicians, inspired by the legend
of Piedra Roja, reviving the hippy spirit in a land
now mercifully more open to change. “Piedra
Roja occurs at a moment in which David
confronts Goliath,” reflects Malucha Pinto.

“And somehow, the weak won.”

EXTRAS: None.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 99

DVD & Blu-ray

DEAD

MAM

8/10

DEAD MAN

SODA PICTURES

Jarmusch’s metaphysical
Western, featuring
a solo soundtrack
from Neil Young

Little seen and long
underrated, Jim
Jarmusch’s 1995 black-
and-white Western -
remastered and

- re-released separately

and in a Blu-ray boxset -
endures as one of his most daring and
substantial films. Johnny Depp plays William
Blake, hapless and aptly named hero of a
metaphysical odyssey in which English
poetry meets native American lore. Severe,
strange and deeply haunting, Dead Man is
notable for Robert Mitchum’s final role, an
eerie, masterful solo guitar score by Neil
Young - and Iggy Pop in a bonnet.

EXTRAS: None.

JONATHAN ROMNEY

\

DYING OF
THE LIGHT

SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT

What’s left of Paul
Schrader’s new movie

When writer-director
(Schrader), star (Nic Cage)
and executive producer
(Nicolas Winding Refn)
all condemn their film,
6/10 you have to check it out.

- A counter-terrorism

thriller, Cage is a CIA

agent fighting early dementia, while battling
to bring down an old (terminally ill) Islamist
nemesis. The real thrills occurred behind
the scenes, when the backers took the movie
from Schrader and drastically re-edited
it. What’s left is a fitfully entertaining
popcorn B-movie, ghosted by curious
shades of fever and anguish, held together
by some wired Cage.

EXTRAS: None.

DAMIENLOVE

LEVIATHAN

ARTIFICIAL EYE

Brave, bleakly
brilliant fable of
modern Russia

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s
strange, slow drama
has sparked considerable
controversy in Russia,
with political, religious
and cultural voices
denouncing its
unpatriotism in
language that Soviet censors would have
recognised. The tale of a surly mechanic
on the Barents Sea coast losing everything
when the monstrous local mayor decides
that he wants his property, it moves on
waves of alcohol, corruption, cynicism,
history and hopelessness beneath portraits
of Putin and blessings from the Russian
Orthodox Church.

EXTRAS: Director interview, Making Of,
trailer.

DAMIENLOVE

I NEED A
DODGE!

Joe Strummer
On The Run

CADIZ MUSIC

Strummer’s Spanish
7/10 summer of 1985

WE’VE NOT REACHED the full-
on Tupac/Johnny Cash situation yet, perhaps, but
a thriving mini-industry has sprung up in Joe
Strummer heritage documentaries: Dick Rude’s
snappy Mescaleros tour film, Let's Rock Again!

(2004); Julien Temple’s possibly definitive profile
The Future Is Unwritten (2007); and now Nick Hall’s
sweet, low-budget documentary, itself an inadvertent
semi-sequel to Danny Garcia’s enlightening Clash
Mark II doc, The Rise And Fall Of The Clash (2012).

Hall’s film zooms in on the end of the Clash II
chapter to focus on a brief, lesser-known moment in
Strummer’s story: when, in 1985, with that rebooted
version of the group collapsing, the singer left the UK.
As Clash II members Nick Sheppard and Pete Howard
reflect, the sudden disappearance was a virtual
repeat of the headline-making vanishing act
Strummer had performed back in 1982, when he
“went missing” on the eve of the Combat Rock tour -
with one crucial difference. This time when he
disappeared, no-one cared enough to notice.

Sporting a bruised ego and the beginnings of

a beard, Strummer went to ground in Spain - a
country for which he’d felt a deep, obsessive romantic
attachment even before he got around to expressing
it in songs like “Spanish Bombs” - to lick his wounds
and try to work out the way ahead.

The title of Hall’s film refers to the car Strummer
bought while he stayed there, a boxy boat that
became a legend among slack-jawed local punks
as he cruised it around the streets and bars of
Granada, “a miraculous apparition”. Strummer lost
the car when he eventually returned to the UK and
his then-partner Gaby Holford, just in time for the
birth of their first daughter, Lola: he parked it
somewhere, and forgot where.

Hall mounts a little attempt to find that long-
lost Dodge again as a slightly gimmicky framing
device. But the real worth of his documentary lies
in the memories, diaries and fading photographs
of the members of Radio Fortuna and 091, Spanish
bands Strummer befriended during his sojourn,
and, in the latter case, tried to produce an LP for,
with disastrous results.

Strummer had many adventures, and made a lot
of good, forgotten music between the end of The
Clash and his critical rebirth with The Mescaleros.

It’s easy to imagine more such films appearing:
surely, the tale of his reconciliation with Mick Jones
and the creation of BAD’s No 10 , Upping Street album
deserves the documentary treatment next? But future
historians should bear in mind the words of Gaby,
who has the best line in the film: “What do they call it:
‘The Wilderness Years’ ? That was our lifeV ’

EXTRAS: Unconfirmed.

DAMIENLOVE

SILICON
VALLEY

HBO

Hi-tech, geek-chic
startup sitcom

This comes from Mike
(BeavisAnd Butt-head )
Judge, and that wicked
stoner eye remains, but
the tone is closer to his
8/10 cult 1996 movie Office

- Space, albeit seriously

rebooted. Thomas
Middleditch stars as a charming geek
programmer, dreaming of creating his
own start-up. When he writes an algorithm
whose implications are so far-reaching
he doesn’t understand them himself, he
becomes the centre of a bidding war
between rival tech billionaires. The Palo
Alto scene satire is sharp yet shaggy, and it
all leads to one incredible, incredibly crude,
incredibly sustained gag about handjobs.
EXTRAS: Making Of, commentaries.

7/10 DAMIENLOVE

MR

TURNER

ENTERTAINMENT ONE

Classy, gripping
biopic of artist
JMW Turner

There’s no mistaking
the Mike Leigh touch,
even when the director
steps away from
modernity and into
the Victorian age.
Leigh’s superb portrait
of painter JMW Turner is as much about
the subject’s times as about his career
and private life. In the title role, Timothy
Spall is magnificent: a grunting, brutish
leviathan of a man, as well as a visionary
artist and delicate soul. This ambitious
panorama of a film brings grit and
gusto to the usually decorous English
costume genre.

EXTRAS: Interviews, deleted scenes,
featurettes.

JONATHAN ROMNEY

100 | UNCUT I APRIL 2015

JUAN JESUS GARCIA

DIGITAL EDITION AVAILABLE EVERY MONTH

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UNCUT.CO.UK

Films

by MICHAEL BONNER

This month: A tribute to Robert
Altman, two wildly different
takes on real-life murders, and
the Brit gangster flick reinvented

T ales of thegrimsleeper

During a career spanning nearly 40
years, Nick Broomfield has often
turned to crime investigations that
raise larger questions about gender,
race and social inequality in America. The
exploitation of Aileen Wuornos, for instance, in
Aileen: The Selling Of A Serial Killer, or the deep
levels of corruption he exposed within the L APD in
Biggie & Tupac . Indeed, for all his genial qualities,
one of Broomfield most consistent attributes is
the compassion he carries for many - though, as
viewers of Kurt & Courtney will recall, not all - of
his subjects. It is an approach that has benefited
Broomfield well; and one that he brings into sharp
focus in his latest documentary, Tales Of The Grim
Sleeper: His subject is Lonnie Franklin Jr, a resident
of South Central LA who was arrested in 2010 and
accused of a string of killings spanning 22 years.
Franklin was a well-liked figure in his community -
a neighbour admits, “He was a nice guy, I’d never
put anything past him like that [murder] ; it makes
no sense” - and initially Broomfield’s film
resembles a critical biography of the accused. 180
photos of missing women are found at his house;
how does that square with his public reputation
as a stand-up guy? But beyond investigating
Franklin, Broomfield has a broader scope in mind.
As the film develops, he digs around in the
neighbourhood, revealing an area blighted by
poverty, drugs and crime, where the disappearance
and murder of African-American women is not a
significant priority for the LA judicial system.
Assisting him is one of Franklin’s neighbours, a
colourful former prostitute and recovering crack
addict named Pam Brooks, who provides a
diverting foil to the soft-spoken Broomfield.

>- Still Alice In his 2012 film, Amour, the
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke depicted
the effects of a stroke on an educated, successful
family. The film was a typically rigorous attempt
to dismantle one of the last great taboos in cinema,
delivered with the director’s typically unfussy,
scrupulous sensibility. Still Alice, by directors
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, focuses

on the degenerative affects of Alzheimer’s on
Julianne Moore’s title character. Alice is a
successful linguistics professor with a doting and
successful husband and three successful children.
While delivering a speech about linguistic
education (irony klaxon), Alice looses her thread.
Several other indicators suggest something is
wrong; naturally, the diagnosis derails the family.
It’s a rare genetic type, with a significant chance
it will recur in her children; one of whom is
undergoing fertility treatment. But fortunately, her
husband is a senior research physician who can
offer more than the usual level insight into Alice’s
debilitating condition. It is hard to fault the
sentiment behind Glatser and Westmoreland’s
film; however like Philadelphia or TheDivingBell
And The Butterfly, Still Alice perpetuates the notion
that illness is more tragic when it strikes well-
heeled high-achievers. It is hard to find a reason to
feel sympathy for Alice’s condition, beside the fact
she has Alzheimer’s. There is strong work here from
Moore, Alec Baldwin as her husband and Kristen

Stewart as her youngest daughter. But because
Glatzer and Westmoreland elect to portray Alice’s
decline in as tasteful a manner as possible, the
result feels more middlebrow TV Movie Of The
Week than anything more significant.

>- The Face Of An Angel Michael
Winterbottom is clearly no stranger to unusual
methods of storytelling. A Cock And Bull Story, his
adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy,
was really about two actors trying to adapt Sterne’s
unfilmable novel; meanwhile, Everyday, his TV
drama about a family coping while the husband is
in prison, was shot over five years. His latest film,
The Face Of An Angel, is ostensibly a fictionalised
account of the murder of an English student in Italy;
but congruent to that, it appears to be a journey
through the mind of a struggling film director.

Evidently, the source of the film is the murder of
21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher in
2007. One character here, Simone (Kate Beckinsale),
an American journalist, is based on Barbie Latza

Reviewed this month...

TALES OF
THE GRIM
SLEEPER

Director Nick
Broomfield
Starring Nick
Broomfield
Opens now
Cert 15 _

8/10

STILL ALICE

Director Richard
Glatzer and Wash
Westmoreland
Starring Julianne
Moore, Alec
Baldwin
Opens March 6
Cert 12 A _

6/10

THE FACE OF
AN ANGEL

Director Michael
Winterbottom
Starring Daniel
Brtihl, Kate
Beckinsale
Opens March 27
CertlS _

6/10

HYENA

Director
Gerard Johnson
Starring Peter
Ferdinando,
Stephen Graham
Opens March 6
Cert 18

8/10

ALTMAN

Director
Ron Mann
Starring James
Caan, Kathryn
Reed Altman
Opens April 3
Certi2A

7/10

102 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Films

4PP

An affectionate
tribute to the late,
great Robert Altman

heightened, sensory type of filmmaking - rich in
metaphor and explicitly tied to the experimental
cinema of the ’60s and ’70s. Gerard Johnson,
meanwhile, is pursuing a different agenda. His
two films - Tony and Hyena - are both gruelling
thrillers, set in London’s less salubrious districts.
Both are scored by the director’s brother, The The’s
Matt Johnson, and both feature the same lead actor,
their cousin, Peter Ferdinando. In Tony , Ferdinando
played a serial killer stalking Bethnal Green; in
Hyena , he plays Michael Logan, a policeman who
employs violence indiscriminately and abuses his
authority to take a cut from local gangs. Ferdinando
plays Logan with commendable restraint, and even
allows us to glimpse what remains of his moral
code: he will not tolerate violence against women,
particularly. Hyena takes place in starkly lit
nightclubs, grotty pubs and council flats, with
Turkish gangs competing with their Albanian
rivals for drug routes and prostitution rings.

In many respects, it operates like a sobering
counterpoint to the early noughties Brit crime
flicks; but also the largely repugnant tranche of
straight-to-video gangster films that propagate a
brutal, geezerish type of violence. Accordingly,
there is little daylight in Hyena: the action largely
occurs at night, and when scenes do take place
during Logan’s office hours they have a clammy,
hungover feel. Matt Johnson’s score - reviewed on
page 56 - offers bursts of dissonance and reverb-
heavy loops. Gerard Johnson, meanwhile, brings a
documentarian’s eye to the proceedings: even
when a key character is disembowelled with a
kebab knife, the filmmaker remains dispassionate.

Nadeau, who wrot e Angel Face, one of the first
books published about the trial. It is Simone who
advises Thomas (Daniel Briihl), a director hoping to
make a film about the case: “If you’re going to make
a movie, make it fiction. You cannot tell the truth
unless you make it a fiction.” Indeed, as the film
develops, the attention drifts away from the murder
to settle with Thomas and his attempts to formulate
an approach for his film.

Essentially, this is Winterbottom combining the
topical qualities of Welcome To Sarajevo or In This
World with the meta-narratives familiar from 24
Hour Party People, A Cock And Bull Story and, on TV,
The Trip. You sense
Thomas is possibly
an analogue for
Winterbottom himself;
figuring out how best
to make the film. But
Winterbottom pushes
Thomas into Don’t Look
iVow-style spasms of
paranoia as he stalks the
labyrinthine cobbled streets of Siena, experiencing
hallucinatory passages involving, on one occasion,
a nocturnal assault by gargoyles. It’s a shame. There
is plenty of interesting gear in the early part of the
film about how the media creates narratives, and
the moral responsibility of journalism.

>• Hyena Much has been made of the strong
work done in recent years by British filmmakers
like Peter Strickland, Ben Wheatley and Jonathan
Glazer. Between them, they favour a certain

>- Altman For a filmmaker whose preferred
style of movie-making was loose and digressive,
this affectionate tribute to the late, great Robert
Altman is remarkably straightforward. That’s not to
demerit the film unduly, but the narrative moves in
workmanlike fashion when it should ideally amble
along, occasionally pausing to truffle out some
interesting minor detail. Certainly, Ron Mann’s film
is at its best when exploring Altman’s nascent
career: his time as an airman during the war and
his apprenticeship in network TV. An early
supporter was Hitchcock, who invited him to direct
episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents... during the
1950s. His formative attempts at filmmaking were
compromised: for
instance, he was fired
from Countdown, about
a space mission to the
moon, before it was even
finished. Admittedly,
much of Altman’s initial
forays into filmmaking
are less well-told than,
say, the stories of
M*A*S*H or Nashville. It would be nice to dig a little
deeper, too, into Brewster McCloud, California Split
and 3 Women. Along the way, Mann assembles an
impressive list of collaborators to offer confirmation
to Altman’s skills - James Caan, Julianne Moore
and Bruce Willis among them. But their testimonies
are warm rather than illuminating. At its most
infuriating, Mann’s film is crushingly literal: “Bob
loved to throw a party,” his widow Kathryn Reed
Altman tells us in voiceover - cut to an early,
unreleased Altman short called... The Party.

Mann’s film is best when
it explores Altman’s war
service or apprenticeship
innetworkTV

Also out...

THE SECOND BEST
EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

OPENS FEBRUARY 26

Take your mum! Dench, Nighy, Imrie
and co return for more of the same
high-end luvviedom.

FOCUS _

OPENSFEBRUARY27

Will Smith plays a globe-trotting conman,
who is pitched against a former flame in
a hustle.

CHAPPIE _

OPENSMARCH 6

Sci-fi gear from District 9 s Neill Blomkamp,
about a robot rebelling against his nasty
creators. Poor robot.

LIFE OF RILEY

OPENSMARCH 6

The late Alain Resnais’ third - yes, third -
adaptation of an Alan Ayckbourn play.
Yorkshire, mon amour!

UNFINISHED

BUSINESS _

OPENSMARCH 6

Vince Vaughn plays a businessman whose
trip to Europe goes disastrously wrong -
with hilarious results, etc.

WHITE BIRD IN

A BLIZZARD _

OPENSMARCH 6

Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd score the
latest from Gregg Araki: a teenager
unravels in ’80s suburbia.

FAR FROM THE

MADDING CROWD _

OPENS MARCH 13

Ahead of Thomas Vinterberg’s new
adaptation, the classy John Schlesinger
version from 1967 gets a welcome reissue.

MY NAME IS SALT _

OPENS MARCH 13

Doc following Indian families who spend
eight months a year extracting salt from
the desert.

THE GUNMAN _

OPENSMARCH20

Shunted back a month, this finds Sean Penn
chasing a bit of Liam Neeson’s mature
action-hero vibes.

ROBOT OVERLORDS _

OPENS MARCH 27

Earth has been conquered by robots from a
distant galaxy. Only Gillian Anderson and
Ben Kingsley can save us now.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 103

JIM DYSON/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES

JULIAN COPE

VILLAGE UNDERGROUND, LONDON, JANUARY29,2015

The “ultimate intuitive non-career mover” makes a rare visit to London.
Expect psychedelic revolutions and, erm, Comsat Angels nostalgia...

IX-FOOT-SOMETHING, wild of hair
and straggly of beard, Julian Cope tears
into his as yet unreleased Christmas
single, “Cunts Can Fuck Off”. “Here
comes a priest in the pay of a Nazi
pope ,” coos the indie pop Mad Max, standing
in the shadow of a gigantic Salvation Army-
style drum bearing the motto ‘YOU CAN’T BEAT
YOUR BRAIN FOR ENTERTAINMENT’. “Do like
Black Sabbath, swing that fucker on the end of a
rope." It sounds not unlike Dave Dee, Dozy,

Beaky, Mick & Titch after an extreme debrief at
White Panther HQ.

In his younger days, Cope worked hard to
assume an unhinged air; at 57, it seems that he
no longer needs to make an effort. Slamming
away at his acoustic 12-string in his Jim-
Morrison-directed-by-Ken-Russell look, he
looks entirely natural. Funny, but not joking.

“I got into rock’n’roll to wind people up and it
never left me,” Cope explains later. In that regard,
his current look may be the most striking, most

defiantly out-there avatar of a career not short on
brilliant costume changes: the punk-rock Biggies
of The Teardrop Explodes; the washed-up Skip
Spence turtle of Fried; the leather messiah of
Saint Julian ; the cosmic joker of Brain Donor.
Crucially, the sleeveless biker jacket and military
cap he wears are anything but stage gear; they
are a 24-hour-a-day commitment.

“The most important thing to me is the way that
I look when I’m putting diesel into my car on the
M4, because most people - that’s what they see

104 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

of me,” Cope tells Uncut. “And I want them to see
somebody who is evidently different from the
rest of the world. Some
businessmen are going to be
put out ’cause I have a good-
quality, hot car, and they are
going to see evidence that
you don’t have to be a cunt.”

Not being a cunt is, if
Cope’s MO is any measure, a
significant commitment. Cope
effectively signed off from the
mainstream music industry in
the late-’90s. He tells the crowd
in London how his flat refusal
to do a US tour to support 1994’s Autogeddon -
an unlikely one-off alliance with Def Jam’s rock
division Def American - caused substantial
bemusement, but, as he shrugs to the crowd:

“I am the ultimate intuitive non-career mover.”

A completely solo recording artist since
establishing his Head Heritage label in 1997,

15 Autogeddon Blues

ENCORE

14 Treason

15 Robert Mitchum

Cope’s greatest
passion is for the
next challenge,
the next pocket
of darkness to
illuminate

Tamworth’s singular gift to
gnosticism has followed his
muse to remote places since;
the drone records; the glam
metal project; the Sunn O)))
collaboration; last year’s One
Three One - his unhinged
novelistic riff on football
hooliganism - and associated
fake rave singles. That’s
before the research into
prophets and pre-history.

At the Village Underground,
he talks through a typically
heroic voyage to visit a
megalithic site in a cave in
Armenia, under heavy
manners from local peasants
and an ever-present
spook/interpreter, which
culminated in Cope being
flung off the wagon after 21
years without alcohol. To an
outsider, it could all seem like a psychedelic
ramble - a bad-trip gap year gone mad; to Cope,
the music, writing and indeed the music writing
are elements of a rigorously pursued mission.

“My career has been based on being a truth-
seeker; my career has been based on observation
and research,” he says, insistent that he stakes
his reputation on being “a motherfucker whose
endgame is not to get as much money as they
can; whose endgame is to go to as many of the
shadowy corners of culture that I can find and
to bring back what I can see is the root cause of
our misunderstandings”.

It sounds a bit heavy going for the singer Paul
Morley once described as “the only man who can
sing ‘ba ba ba’ and mean it”, but Cope on stage
remains a blissfully easy sell. His basic theory
on pre-history and how great cultural shifts are
never a “product of the smug and the cynical”,
is expressed with cheerful clarity on “They
Were On Hard Drugs”. Elsewhere, sugarcube-
sweetness softens the acid-edges of Cope’s ‘spike
Parliament’ fantasy “Psychedelic Revolution”,
while there is even affection redeeming “Liver As
Big As Hartlepool”. The latter is a snipe at former
Crucial Three cohort Pete Wylie’s alcohol
consumption at the time of his near-hit
“Heart As Big As
Liverpool”, but one that
morphs into an unexpec¬
tedly nostalgic tour of
northwest inner-space.

Cope’s past is not an
entirely foreign country.

“I think you will all
remember my band... the
Comsat Angels,” he says,
teasing manfully as he

_ introduces a revelatory

stripped-down version of
The Teardrop Explodes’ slice of scenester
paranoia, “The Culture Bunker”. “Take me to
the moon - it’s safe and I want to lie down” he
intones, momentarily the lost boy of post-
reward” chart success again, while
renditions of early solo standards “Sunspots”
and “The Greatness And Perfection Of Love”

SETLIST

1 I’m Living In The Room
They Found Saddam In

2 The Culture Bunker

5 Double Vegetation _

4 They Were On Hard Drugs

Sunspots

Psychedelic Revolution

7 As The Beer Flows Over Me

Liver As Big As Hartlepool
The Greatness And
Perfection Of Love

9 Cromwell In Ireland

IQ Cunts Can Fuck Off

11 Soul Desert

12 Pristeen

give reason to regret that the
supremely uxorious Cope
doesn’t really do love
songs anymore.

Love, however, may
be a task he has already
completed, and with another
book and a collection of beer¬
drinking songs in the works,
Cope’s greatest passion is
once more for the next
challenge, the next pocket
of darkness to illuminate.

“I don’t dwell on it - it’s all
part of a great journey,” he
shrugs to Uncut as he ponders
past musical indiscretions,
adamant that his absolute
commitment to his passion of
the day remains his ultimate
USP. “My wife found a picture
[from 1978] that Marc Riley
had tweeted of me at a Fall
gig, and I’m at the front; I’m not at the back, I’m
not some la-de-da fucker - I’m there because I
believed, and that’s what’s kept me going.” That
tunnel-vision, that passion, might ultimately be
what has kept his devoted followers interested in
the latter part of his career, now helpfully
abbreviated on his new Trip Advizer comp. The
reason people stick with Cope may be because
they know he is never just going to do another
Fried , another Peggy Suicide. They pay attention
to his pop writing because - as he did with
Krautrocksampler and Japrocksampler - there’s a
good chance he’s going to get somewhere first.

Back at the Village Underground, Cope spins
round after a valedictory whirl through
traditional set-closer “Robert Mitchum” and -
not for the first time - raises a fist. A slightly
wimpy, skinny-armed fist; a slightly sarcastic,
ironic fist; a fist that, tagged to that outfit, and
the frequent, faux-American “yeeahs!” suggests
an artist who’s not sure where to draw the line
between big bad Billy Gibbons and Billy
Connolly; but a genuine, defiant fist nonetheless.
Not seriously insane at all. Insanely serious.

JIMWIRTH

YOU CAN'T 1
YOUR BRAIN FOtf !
v ENTERTAINMENT i

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 105

ANDREW BENGE/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES

STEFAN HOEDERATH/REDFERNS

LAMBCHOP
PLAY NIXON

HEIMATHAFEN, BERLIN, FEBRUARY 5,2015

Kurt Wagner’s troupe bring their
breakthrough album back to life

T here comes a point

during every Lambchop
show when Kurt Wagner
hands the floor over to
Tony Crow, pianist and
raconteur par excellence of the old
school. Tonight his moment comes
as the Nashville band complete their
live reimagining of Nixon on the eve
of the album’s 15th anniversary.
While raucous cheers resound
through the elegant, 150-year-old
theatre, Crow asks Wagner
mischievously, “Did you know
back then your music was gonna
be making a social change for so
many people?” “I didn’t hear that,”
Wagner replies bashfully, shaking
his head in disbelief.

But, in many ways it did, and
not least for Lambchop. Topping
countless Album Of The Year polls,
not least Uncut's own, Nixon saw
their sales surge, gave them an
unlikely radio hit in the shape of the
exuberant “Up With People”, and
ensured years of performances in
prestigious European venues. Its
Philly strings and Nashville stylings

also joyously, if unwittingly,
underlined a growing suspicion that
country music had always been the
white man’s soul music. A decade
and a half later, Nixon's influence
on the likes of Matthew E White and
Natalie Prass is clearly audible.

If anything has changed, however,
it’s initially hard to tell. Wagner still
sports a humble baseball cap and
heavy, black-rimmed glasses, with
only his formal blazer evidence of
the passing of the years. Closer
inspection, though, reveals just two
of the original Nixon lineup: William
Tyler, returning to the ranks after

This ramshackle
collective is now
a tight, well-
drilled, slimmed-
down unit

carving an impressive niche for
himself as a Fahey-esque solo
guitarist, and bassist Matt Swanson,
whose nimble fingers have made him
indispensable since he and Tyler
joined for Nixon's studio sessions.

The endearingly ramshackle
collective that was Lambchop 2000
is now a tight, well-drilled, slimmed-
down unit, gently propelled by
drummer Scott Martin, and subtly
embroidered by Ryan Norris’
keyboards, Matt Glassmeyer’s
brass, and, of course, Crow.

It becomes clear that Wagner,
too, has evolved, overcoming the
limitations of his voice to abandon
the unconventional falsetto he was
once able to employ, instead twisting
his melodies into new shapes. A note-
for-note replication of the original
album is of little interest to the
frontman: “The Old Gold Shoe” is
dealt a fresh range of dynamics, its
crescendos unexpected and
invigorating, and the smooth languor
of “You Masculine You” swells from
its opening supper club mood
towards a surprisingly noisy climax,
Glassmeyer’s sax honking fruitily
while Crow hammers away to
compensate for the lack of strings.

In addition, the sombre tension of
“The Petrified Florist” is further
embellished by Norris’ fondness for
electronic trickery, Tyler’s subdued
feedback and the ominously low
notes Crow teases from his
instrument. Meanwhile, “The
Butcher Boy” - always a troublingly
discordant end to the album itself -
is rendered unrecognisable by a
rearrangement that emphasises the
distance Wagner’s aesthetic has

travelled from Lambchop’s raw,
unpolished beginnings.

Of course, “Up With People”
remains the most rapturously
received song tonight, its bassline
rolling like the Batman theme as
it careers towards its joyful climax
with added urgency. But encores
of Curtis Mayfield’s “Give Me Your
Love” and Bowie’s “Young
Americans” - the latter slyly
recognising that Lambchop were
hardly the first to explore soul
music’s potency outside its original
context - ensure a fittingly
celebratory conclusion. Much has
changed in 15 years, and Wagner
may find it hard to believe, but Nixon
is nonetheless still the one.

WYNDHAM WALLACE

SETLIST

1

The Old Gold Shoe

2

Grumpus

3

You Masculine You

4

Up With People

5

Nashville Parent

6

What Else Could it Be

7

The Distance From

Her To There

8

The Book 1 Haven’t Read

9

The Petrified Florist

10 The Butcher Boy

11

Give Me Your Love

12

My Face Your Ass

13

We Never Argue

14

Gone Tomorrow

ENCORE

15 Young Americans

106 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

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29 GREAT YARMOUTH SKAM0UTH
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APRIL

01 LONDON INTERNATIONAL SKA FESTIVAL
02 LONDON INTERNATIONAL SKA FESTIVAL
43 READING SUB 89
04 BRISTOL THE STATION

50™ ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

D THE

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FEATURING ORIGINAL MEMBERS

RODNEY SLATER, NEIL INNES, SAM SPOONS,
VERNON DUDLEY BOWHAY NOWELL & BOB KERR

FRIDAY 17 th APRIL 2015

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THE STONE

ROBIN MCKELLE .

... 19 MAR

FOUNDATION .

..14 MAY

DENNIS ROLLINS .

. .. 21 MAR

SHOWADDYWADDY..

. .29 MAY

IAN SIEGAL .

...28 MAR

HERITAGE

LEE SCRATCH PERRY...

. 1 &2APR

BLUES

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.... 3 APR

ORCHESTRA .

... 7 JUN

STEVE HOWE .

...19APR

MONOPHONICS.

...16JUN

POLICE DOG

MYLES SANKO .

..26 JUN

HOGAN + NEIL INNES .

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08 FOLKESTONE |so L E oJLVf HALL 19 ABERDEEN mo 0® ALL

09 NORWICH UEAoUJ out 21 DUNDEE FAsold outjve

11 MANCHESTER0 2 APOLLO 23 NEWCASTLIsoldout.DEMY

12 LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC 24 YORK BARB sold out

14 LONDON HAMMERSMITH 26 SOUTHAMFsold out GUILDHALL
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TUESDAY 28™ APRIL

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SJM CONCERTS PRESENTS

PLAYING THE GREATEST HITS
AND TRACKS FROM THE NEW ALBUM BIG MUSIC

SIMPLE MINDS

BIG MUSIC TOUR 2015 H

FRI 27 MARCH
GRIMSBY AUDITORIUM
SAT 28 MARCH
LLANDUDNO
VENUE CYMRU ARENA
MON 30 MARCH
STOKE VICTORIA HALL
TUE 31 MARCH
LEICESTER
DE MONTFORT HALL
THU 02 APRIL
LIVERPOOL
EMPIRE THEATRE
FRI 03 APRIL
BLACKPOOL
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SAT 04 APRIL
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MON 06 APRIL
NEWCASTLE CITY HALL

EDINB HALL

PERI SOLD J£UT HALL

FRI 10 APRIL
MANCHESTER
02 APOLLO
SAT 11 APRIL
BIRMINGHAM
02 ACADEMY
SUN 12 APRIL
SHEFFIELD CITY HALL
TUE 14 APRIL
BRIGHTON DOME
WED 15 APRIL
PORTSMOUTH
GUILDHALL
FRI 17 APRIL
PLYMOUTH PAVILIONS
SAT 18 APRIL
CARDIFF

MOTORPOINT ARENA
SUN 19 APRIL
BOURNEMOUTH
02 ACADEMY

TUP oh
SOLD OUT_

CORN EXCHANGE

cold OUT
NOI-?>r,r.T me NICK
RAYNS LCR UEA
FRI 24 APRIL
MARGATE
WINTER GARDENS

CLIFFS PAVILION
SUN 26 APRIL
OXFORD NEW THEATRE

GUlSOLDOUT^

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BRIST SO^P,.o.ON HALL

RE^ SOLO ,OUJ G on

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IPSWICH REGENT

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ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. • ALT-J ■ AMERICAN FOOTBALL
ANDREW WEATHERALL * ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS
ARIEL PINK > ARTHUR RUSSELL INSTRUMENTALS < BABES IN TOYLAND
BAXTER DURY - BELLE & SEBASTIAN • BEN WATT - BENJAMIN BOOKER
THE BLACK KEYS ■ THE BOHICAS ■ BRAND NEW ■ CARIBOU ■ CHEATAHS
CHET FAKER - CHILDHOOD - CHRISTINA ROSENVINGE - THE CHURCH
CINERAMA - DJ COCO - DAMIEN RICE - DAN DEACON
DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 • DER PANTHER • DIIV • DISAPPEARS
DIXON ■ EARTH • EARTHLESS ■ EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
ELECTRIC WIZARD • EX HEX - EXXASENS ■ FOXYGEN ■ FUCKED UP
FUMACA PRETA • THE GHOST OF A SABER TOOTH TIGER ■ GIANT SAND
GREYLAG - GUI BORATTO • HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS * HEALTH
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER > HOOKWORMS - THE HOTELIER • INTERPOL
JAMES BLAKE - JOAN MIQUEL OLIVER - JON HOPKINS - JOSE GONZALEZ
THE JUAN MACLEAN (live) - JULIAN CASABLANCAS+THE VOIDZ - THE JULIE RUIN
JUNGLE • KELELA • KEVIN MORBY - THE KVB • LAS RUINAS
LES AMBASSADEURS - LOS PUNSETES - MAC DEMARCO ■ MARC PINOL
MARC RIBOT'S CERAMIC DOG ■ MDOU MOCTAR ■ MIKAL CRONIN
MIKE SIMONETTI ■ MINERAL ■ MIQUEL SERRA • MOURN - MOVEMENT
NELEONARD • THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS ■ NUEVA VULCANO
NURIA GRAHAM • OCELLOT - OMD • OUGHT - PALLBEARER • PANAMA
PANDA BEAR ■ PATTI SMITH & BAND perform HORSES ■ PERFUME GENIUS
PERRO • PHARMAKON • RATATAT • THE REPLACEMENTS ■ RICHIE HAWTIN
RIDE • ROCIO MARQUEZ ■ ROMAN FLUGEL ■ RUN THE JEWELS
SHABAZZ PALACES - SHELLAC * SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO - SINGLE MOTHERS
SLEAFORD MODS - SLEATER-KINNEY * THE SOFT MOON * SPIRITUALIZED
SR. CHINARRO * STRAND OF OAKS • THE STROKES
THE SUICIDE OF WESTERN CULTURE * SUN KIL MOON ■ SUNN O))) ■ SWANS
THEE OH SEES - THE THURSTON MOORE BAND • TOBIAS JESSO JR.

TONY ALLEN - TORI AMOS ■ TUNE-YARDS - TWERPS - TWIN SHADOW
TYLER, THE CREATOR - UNDERWORLD dubnobasswithmyheadman live
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA ■ VIET CONG ■ VOIVOD ■ WHITE HILLS

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OKIE'S £h£» Hr

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PAULW M

PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS

YOUNG FATHERS

I

20 NOV BRIGHTON CENTRE

21 NOV BOURNEMOUTH BIC

22 NOV CARDIFF MOTORPOINT ARENA

24 NOV GLASGOW THE SSE HYDRO

25 NOV NEWCASTLE METRO RADIO ARENA

27 NOV BIRMINGHAM BARCLAYCARD ARENA

28 NOV MANCHESTER ARENA

29 NOV LEEDS FIRST DIRECT ARENA
04 DEC LONDON EVENTIM APOLLO
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0844847 1515
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NEW ALBUM
SATURNS PATTERN
OUT MAY 11

s

NSS

NTSOBC PROUDLY PRESENTS

UK/IRELAND TOUR

FRI 6 LONDON, St Giles In The Fields

SAT 7 BIRMINGHAM, The Institute

MON 9 STIRLING, Tolbooth

TUES 10 EDINBURGH, Pleasance Theatre

WED 11 GLASGOW, St Andrews in the Square

FRI 13 BRISTOL, St Georges

SUN 15 GATESHEAD, Old Town Hall

MON 16 LEEDS, Irish Centre

TUES 17 READING, Sub 89

WED 18 SHEFFIELD, Memorial Hall

MARCH 2015

FRI 20 LIVERPOOL, The Leaf

SAT 21 MANCHESTER, Martin Harris Centre

SUN 22 CARDIFF, Globe

MON 23 NORWICH, Norwich Arts Centre

WED 25 BELFAST, Empire Music Hall

THRS 26 LIMERICK, Dolans

FRI 27 DUBLIN, Whelans

SAT 28 CORK, Crane Lane Theatre

SUN 29 CORK, Crane Lane Theatre

( loosemusic.com)

UNCUTUYEjMmmm^^

TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

EDGE ST LIVE PRESENTS

Edge Street live & Moneypenny Present

GRETCHIN

2015^KTour

New Album
“Blackbirds”
Out Now

“One of
Nashville’s
greatest talents
of the past two
decades”

UNCUT 9/10

PETERS

MARCH

15 -nf 1 — ifn» Exeter

16 - Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne

17 - St. Georges, Bristol

18 -EEDWEEPWavendon

20 - Royal Hall, Harrogate

21 - Town Hall, Birmingham

22 - The Sage, Gateshead

24 - St Paul’s Centre, Worthing

25 -eoaiKRfiPLondon

27 - Engine Shed, Lincoln

28 - Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal

29 - Epstein Theatre, Liverpool
31 - The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds

iPRIL

2 - RHCM, Manchester

3 - Queens Hall, Edinburgh
5 - Inchyra Arts Club, Perth

www.gretchenpeters.com

THEA GILMORE

BIRMINGHAM, Town Hall
NOTTINGHAM, Glee Club
POCKUNGTON, Arts Centre
BRIGHTON, Komedia
GATESHEAD, The Sage
BINGLEY, Arts Centre
CHELTENHAM, Town Hall
MANCHESTER, RNCM
MILTON KEYNES, The Stables
BURY ST EDMUNDS, The Apex
LONDON, Cadogan Hall

www.theagilmore.net

New Album

I “Ghosts and Graffiti” |
Out on 27 April

By arrangement with Asgard

Winners of

at BBC!!

British Foil Awards

*3*5 f MAY 2015

ffHa 4 LINCOLN

jH||fl ENGINE SHED

9BI5 LIVERPOOL

ST.GEORGES HALL
www.thefullenglishband.co.uk

JOSH P^USE

New Album
“The Embers
of Time"

Out Soon

lJT' i v. w I \

APRIL 2015

23 LONDON, Kings Place

24 MANCHESTER, Ruby Lounge

25 POCKUNGTON, Arts Centre
27 MILTON KEYNES, The Stables
28> NOTTINGHAM, Glee Club

29 GLASGOW, Oran Mor
www.joshrouse.com

box office 01582 767525

book online www.harpendenpublichalls.co.uk

Southdown Road, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1 PD (2 minutes walk from the station)

Los Endos

Celebrating the music of Genesis

Friday 6 March 7.30pm

Chris Helme

Acoustic set from ex Seahorses
frontman Wednesday8April 7.30pm

Hannah Scott

Showcasing the album ‘Space In Between’
Wednesday 15 April 7.30pm

Sharon Shannon

With Alan Connor

Sunday 3 May 7.30pm

Voodoo Room

Tribute to 60‘s rock pioneers Jimi Hendrix
and Cream Frjday 22 May 7.30pm

Peggy Seeger

The 80th Birthday Tour

Thursday 4 June 7.30pm

Edge St Live & SJM Present

DR JOHN COOPER
CLARKE

4

f

V

18 Knaresborough ? PYRM meatre

19 Bingley souA,ouT e

21 Manchester 02 Apollo
With Special Guests

Simon Day as
Geoffrey Allerton,

Mike Garry and
Luke Wright.

26 Sudbury Quay Theatre
28 Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall

9 Bromsgrove TheArtix

11 Laugharne Weekend

23 Wimborne Tivoli

24 Tiverton Comedy Hall

25 Ivybridge The Watermark

12 Ledbury Festival

14 Carlisle Arts Centre

15 Durham Gala

16 Selby sold. pur.

11 London Shepherds Bush Empire

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM UNCUT LIVE

TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

*| "I • APPEARING LIVE "|

eddi reader

20/3 BURY The Met
21/3 S ALTAI RE Victoria Hall
22/3 BROMSGROVE Artrix
24/3 LONDON Cecil Sharp House
25/3 CHESTERFIELD Winding Wheel
27/3 CONGLETON Clonter Opera Theatre
29/3 GLENROTHES Rothes Hall
30/3 LIVINGSTON Howden Park Centre

9/5 HOLMFIRTH Picturedrome
10/5 LIVERPOOL Epstein
12/5 YORK Barbican
13/5 WHITLEY BAY Playhouse
15/5 NEWARK Palace Theatre
16/5 MANCHESTER RNCM
17/5 CARDIGAN Theatr Mwldan
19/5 LEAMINGTON SPA The Assembly
20/5 CHATHAM Britannia Theatre
22/5 SHOREHAM BY SEA Ropetackle Arts Centre
23/5 PORTSMOUTH Wedgewood Rooms
24/5 GREAT TORRINGTON Plough Arts Centre
26/5 SALISBURY City Halls
28/5 EDINBURGH Queen’s Hall
29/5 DUNDEE Gardyne Theatre
30/5 HUNTLY Stewarts Hall

24/7 NEW MILLS The Arts Theatre
26/7 BISHOPS CLEEVE Tithe Barn

TICKETS: EDDIREADER.CO.UK

BACKTHE DOGS EP OUT NOW

THE BELLTHAT NEVER RANG UKTOUR

+ SIOBHAN WILSON

14/5 GLASGOW ST ANDREWS IN THE SQUARE
15/5 PERTH CONCERT HALL
16/5 LIVERPOOL EPSTEIN THEATRE
17/5 MANCHESTER DANCEHOUSE THEATRE
19/5 LEEDS HOWARD ASSEMBLY ROOM
20/5 BRIGHTON KOMEDIA

21/5 LONDON UNION CHAPEL

23/5 TRURO HALL FOR CORNWALL
24/5 COVENTRY WARWICK ARTS CENTRE
26/6 LERWICK MAREEL
27/6 ABERDEEN MUSIC HALL
28/6 STIRLING TOLBOOTH

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FROM LAU-MUSIC.CO.UK

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A PR 11 , 2 Qlf
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MANCHESTER
LEI 1>S
PORTSMOUTH

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NO 1"I INGHAM
EDINBURGH

GLASGOW

MAY 2oif
LONDON

presents

KATHRYN ROBERTS
& SEAN LAKEMAN

ZfomohfiauL tUTUL Zfadci^ ZfoWi

MARCH _

27 BRISTOL THE FOLK HOUSE

28 STROUD THE CONVENT

29 CHIPPING NORTON THEATRE

APRIL _

01 RUNCORN THE BRINDLEY
02 BURY THE MET
03 MATLOCK BATH THE FISHPOND
04 DURHAM GALA THEATRE
05 SKIPTON THE MART THEATRE
06 SEAHOUSES ST CUTHBERT'S HOUSE
09 POCKLINGTON ARTS CENTRE
10 BARNSLEY THE CIVIC

14 FARNHAM MALTINGS

15 WIMBORNE TIVOLI THEATRE

16 BRIGHTON KOMEDIA

17 LONDON KINGS PLACE

18 MAIDSTONE HAZLITT ARTS CENTRE

19 SALISBURY CITY HALL

20 BROMSGROVE ARTRIX

21 MILTON KEYNES THE STABLES

22 HEREFORD THE COURTYARD ARTS CENTRE

24 DIDC0T CORNERSTONE ARTS CENTRE

25 ST0URP0RTST0URP0RT CIVIC HALL

26 CAMBRIDGE JUNCTION 2

29 TEWKESBURY THE ROSES

30 EXETER THE PHOENIX

MAY _

01 GREAT TORRINGTON THE PLOUGH ARTS CENTRE
02 DORCHESTER ARTS CENTRE

Tickets: www.kathrynrobertsandseanlakeman.com See TICKETS ticketweb

WW LT-TICKETS.CO U K WWW.SEETIC KETS.COM

W F. A R E V11, L AGERS.CO M

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TEL: 020 3148 2873 FAX: 020 3148 8160

NEW DATES

THE GUITAR EVENT OF THE YEAR!

IDE LIVE IN CONCERT

BONAMASSA

tifiKEIfflOWSfllfffll

★21/10 NEWCASTLE
★23/10 LIVERPOOL
★ 24/10 LEEDS
★25/10 NOTTINGHAM
★27/10 CARDIFF
★28/10

★31/10 DRIGHTON

SMITHWICK’S

If If If I? MM V

UlLIiljliIl I

ROOTS

FESTIVAL

* 1 st - 4 th MAT 2015 *

KILKENNY, IRELAND

>■

CALEXICO

LEE BAMS DI & THE GLORY FIRES
THE BARR BROTHERS I I DRAW SLOW
SONS OF BEL I KACY & CLAYTON
RYANBOLOT I CLEM SNIDE ISOLOI
CALETYSON I DADDYLONGLEGS
SARA WATKMS. SARAH JAROSZ
& AOIFE O'DONOVAN
SUNDAY SCHOOL SESSIONS

^P/iu many mme, ine/udmgr 60 /iee yitp on ffie
(Smrf/uw&j c4(umc

Box Office: Rollercoaster Records,

Kieran Street., Kilkenny, Ireland.

www.kilkennyroots.com | Tel: 00 353 56 776 3669

idQ|

SMITHWICK’S O Failte Irela nd

Hi

Kilkenny

County

Council

Enjoy SMITHWIC K's Sensibly. Visit aware

SMITHWICK’S

PRESENT

St FUTURE
OF MUSIC

► Out every
Wednesday

in all good newsagents and
available to download at
nme.com/dfgital-edition

by ALLAN JONES

Girlinaband:
Kim Gordon live
with Sonic Youth
in May 2009

Reviewed this month...

I'VE ALWAYS
KEPT A UNICORN

T4e Biography of
Saqdy~DeTiqy

MICK HOUGHTON

Girl In A Band

Kim Gordon
FABER & FABER

9/10

I’ve Always Kept
A Unicorn: The
Biography Of
Sandy Denny

Mick Houghton

FABER & FABER

8/10

K IM GORDON’S Girl In A Band opens
with Sonic Youth onstage at the SWU
Music And Arts Festival near Sao Paulo
in November 2011. It’s their final show
together, the last date of a South
American tour made fraught by the announcement
just before it started that Gordon and Thurston
Moore, her husband and bandmate of nearly 30
years, were splitting up. Indie rock’s former golden
couple had been reduced by Moore’s infidelity to
what Gordon sourly describes as “just another
cliche of middle-aged relationship failure - a male
midlife crisis, another woman, a double life.”

Moore’s betrayal of Gordon hangs like a pall
over the book that follows, and she returns to it in
painfully explicit detail at its end. But for all the
anger in these pages, the seething bulk of it directed
at her errant former husband and the woman -
Gordon refuses to even acknowledge her by name -
he preferred to her, Girl In A Band is substantially

more than an extended essay in post-marital
bitterness. The first third of it, especially, is a rich,
well-written account of Gordon’s childhood and
adolescence and the relationships that shaped her
life before, in New York in 1981, she met and fell in
love with Moore, with whom she was soon making
a fearsome noise in Sonic Youth.

There are vivid memories of time spent in Hong
Kong and Hawaii, before her family returned to Los
Angeles, where as a teenager in the late ’60s, Gordon
cultivated a beatnik image, smoking pot, dropping
acid, painting and “getting sad listening to Joni
Mitchell”. Her brother, Keller, was an important,
if volatile, early influence, turning her onto Sartre
and Baudelaire, avant-garde jazz and French New
Wave movies before being consumed by full-blown
psychosis; dressing in white, growing a long beard,
carrying a Bible, answering only to the name of
Oedipus and speaking in his own private language.

Keller also had vague connections to Charles
Manson - the Manson Family allegedly later
murdered one of Keller’s ex-girlfriends, Marine
Herbe. Kim also kept sometimes wild company.

As a student at Santa Monica College in 1972,
she knew Bruce Berry, whose death in 1973 from
a heroin overdose partly inspired Neil Young’s
Tonight's The Night.

Sonic Youth’s long career is negotiated in a
somewhat piecemeal fashion, memories provoked
by specific songs from their 15 albums, a litany of
recording sessions and video shoots briefly
enlivened by anecdotes of touring with Neil Young
and Nirvana and catty recollections of Courtney
Love, whose first album with Hole was produced by
Gordon. The heat rather goes out of the book here,
but comes burbling back to boiling point when she
returns to Moore’s duplicitous philandering.

Gordon dates her estrangement from Moore to
their decision to quit New York, to bring up their
daughter in rural Massachusetts, where Thurston
seemed increasingly “lost in his own weather
patterns, his own season”. There is unsparing detail
about her discovery of his affair via secret texts,

emails, explicit videos, erotic images saved on his
computer, a sad and tawdry conclusion to their
life together, which she recalls with a martyr’s
ruthless forbearance.

“I did feel some compassion for Thurston,” she
writes. “I was sorry for the way he had lost his
marriage, his band, his daughter, his family, our
life together - and himself. But that,” she adds,
stingingly, “is a lot different from forgiveness.”

>- Her more bedazzled admirers were sometimes
in her brief heyday prone to compare Sandy Denny
to Joni Mitchell. When she died in 1978, however, the
more appropriate comparison was with Janis Joplin,
another sloppy drunk with a fatal taste for hard
drugs, in Denny’s case cocaine, under whose
influence her behaviour tested even her most
faithful friends. By then, also, she’d been dropped
by Island Records, her label since she joined Fairport
Convention in 1968, after the dismal sales of her
much-delayed fourth solo album, Rendezvous.
Denny’s original audience, already much
diminished by the deterioration in her music, had
now deserted her almost entirely. No-one could see
a future for her that wasn’t bleak.

Denny’s story has already been well told by writers
Clinton Heylin and Jim Irvin and there’s a typically
good chapter on her career in Rob Young’s Electric
Eden, but Mick Houghton’s exhaustively researched
I've Always Kept A Unicorn lays legitimate claim
to being the most comprehensive account yet of a
career of often unrealised promise. There is copious
and illuminating new testimony here, notably from
Richard and Linda Thompson, Joe Boyd, Richard
Williams and many others who knew Denny well
and despaired at her decline. Houghton also enjoyed
access to the private archive of Denny and her
husband, the Australian folk musician Trevor Lucas,
usually cast as a dire influence, an opportunistic
womaniser who attached himself to Sandy for the
benefit of his own career, but more sympathetically
portrayed in these pages, from which Denny
emerges as the author of her own desperate fate.

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 117

JAMES QUINTON/WWW.TIMEINCUKCONTENT.COM

JOE STEVENS; PETRA NIEMEIER - K & K/REDFERNS

OBITUARIES

Not Fade Away

Fondly remembered this month...

EDGAR FROESE

Tangerine Dream leader

1944-2015

G ROWING UP IN West Berlin had a profound

effect on Edgar Froese. It was a community still
ravaged by the effects of conflict (his father
had been killed in the war), where suspicion
and mistrust ran rife. “Decades later, I moved
into the political and musical underground because my
deep aversion against the phoney establishment was
engraved into my system,” he told this writer in 2010.

“I’ve never sympathised with governmental politics,
commercial interests or the mediocre taste of the masses.”

It was a worldview that fed directly into the radical music of
Tangerine Dream, the experimental band he founded in
1967. Their synth-driven kosmische, often incorporating
tape collages and sequencers, made little or no concessions
to populism in the early ’7os. Alongside Can, Neu!, Cluster
and Kraftwerk, they were at the vanguard of a new form
of German expressionism. By fifth LP Phaedra (1974),
the trio had almost entirely dispensed with standard
instrumentation. Perversely, though, their avant-rhythms
and textures struck a chord in the UK, where the album
made the Top 20. It didn’t stop some extreme reactions
in the press, though. Not least from Melody Maker, who
offered a derogatory headline above their review - “Eat
more shit: 100,000 flies can’t be wrong” - and labelled
Froese “a failed heavy guitarist”.

A year later, Froese issued Epsilon In Malaysian Pale,
which drew high praise from his soon-to-be Berlin
neighbour David Bowie. It was the second of over a
dozen solo albums during a parallel career that found
Tangerine Dream, with Froese as the only constant,
moving into Hollywood soundtrack work in the late ’70s
and ’80s. Among their most prominent scores were
Sorcerer, Legend and Risky Business. By 2014, they’d
amassed over 100 albums. “Hunger for new adventures,
knowing that nothing is perfect, is my driving energy,”
Froese explained.

Froese in
the late
’70s

TREVOR ‘DOZY’
WARD-DAVIES

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky,
Mick & Tich bassist

1944-2015

The story goes that Trevor Ward-
Davies acquired his nickname
after unwrapping a chocolate bar,
throwing away the contents and
eating the wrapper by mistake.

As the bass-playing Dozy, he
co-founded Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky,
Mick & Tich (originally Dave Dee &
The Bostons) in Salisbury in 1961.
The group eventually devised a
formula - unashamedly
commercial pop songs, wacky
boys-next-door image, Carnaby
Street togs - that reaped dividends.

Their first major UK hit was 1966’s
“Hold Tight”, soon followed by
“Bend It!” and “Save Me”. A
number of similar successes carried

them through into 1968, when
novelty tune “The Legend Of
Xanadu” gave them their only UK
No 1. Between 1965 and 1969, the
fivesome spent more time in the
singles chart than The Beatles,

The Kinks and The Who. Dozy
declared that his own particular
favourite was “Zabadak” (1967),
mainly for its mass orchestra of
violins. Despite their popularity
in Britain, Europe and Australia,
the band failed to breach the
US market. Dee quit in 1969, upon
which they pressed on as a quartet,
before breaking up in 1972. By
last year, after a series of lineup
changes and reunions, the band
was down to two original members:
Ward-Davies and guitarist John
(Beaky) Dymond.

DON COVAY

Soul singer and songwriter

1938-2015

“I’m always looking for experiences
we all know and try to relate them
through both my writing and my
singing,” soulman Don Covay told
one interviewer in 1967. It was an
approach that brought him a fair
degree of success, often for other
artists, over a career that bridged
five decades. The son of a Southern
Baptist preacher, Covay started
out in the late ’50s with the Little
Richard Revue. His first minor hit
was 1961’s “Pony Time”, though
Chubby Checker’s version became
a Billboard chart-topper soon after.
He also wrote for Solomon Burke,

118 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

OBITUARIES

Gladys Knight & The Pips and
Wilson Pickett, before scoring a Top
40 single in 1964 with “Mercy,
Mercy” (featuring the unknown
Jimi Hendrix on guitar). The song
was covered the following year by
The Rolling Stones. Perhaps his
best-known composition was
“Chain Of Fools”, which gave
Aretha Franklin one of her biggest
US hits in 1968. He refocused on
solo work in the early ’70s and, in
1986, sang on the Stones’ Dirty
Work. At the turn of the millennium
he released Adlib, a star-packed
affair that included Paul Rodgers,
Wilson Pickett and Otis Clay.

ROD McKUEN

Singer-songwriter ; poet,
translator

1933-2015

At the height of his fame, Rod
McKuen was dubbed “the
unofficial poet laureate of America”
by The St James Encyclopedia Of
Popular Culture. Others, like
Newsweek , merely saw him as “The
King Of Kitsch”. He was an artist
whose mellow evocations of love
tended to divide opinion, selling
over 100 million albums while
being derided by critics for his
sentimentality. Many of his peers
seemed to adore him: in 1969 Frank
Sinatra recorded A Man Alone: The
Words And Music Of McKuen, and
his compositions were also covered
by Johnny Cash, Barbra Streisand,
Waylon Jennings, Chet Baker and
Dusty Springfield. McKuen’s work
spanned pop, poetry, soundtracks
and classical music. One of his most
significant affiliations was with the
Belgian singer-songwriter, Jacques
Brel. Having met in Paris, McKuen
set about translating Brel’s work
into English, including “If You Go
Away” (based on “Ne Me Quitte
Pas”) and “Seasons In The Sun”
(“Le Moribond”), which became
a huge hit for Terry Jacks in 1973.
When Brel died five years later,
McKuen locked himself in
his bedroom and drank for
a week, listening to their songs
on his turntable.

Rod McKuen
on TV in
London ,1967

DEMIS ROUSSOS

Singer ; Aphrodite's Child member

1946-2015

Such was Demis Roussos’
popularity in the ’70s that the BBC
commissioned a TV documentary,
The Roussos Phenomenon, that
sought to explain how a former
prog-rocker was now the toast of
Europe. By then he was on his way
to selling 60 million albums,
propelled by a colourful image
(kaftan, beads, Biblical facial hair)
and a high tenor ideally suited to
yearning love songs. “Forever And
Ever”, the lead track from “The
Roussos Phenomenon” EP, was a
UK No 1 in the summer of ’76. Other
major successes included “Happy
To Be On An Island In The Sun” and
“When Forever Has Gone”. Born in
Egypt but raised in Greece, Roussos
joined his first band, The Idols,
at 17. It was there that he met
Evangelos Papathanassiou, aka
Vangelis. Together with Loukas
Sideras, they formed Aphrodite’s
Child, scoring a minor European
success with 1968’s “Rain And
Tears”. Their first two albums
consisted of hippy-ish psychedelia,
but it was 666, a weighty concept
piece based on the “Book Of
Revelation”, that turned them
into bona fide prog warriors. The
standout, “The Four Horsemen”,
found Roussos in full cry. His work
with Vangelis also extended to
soundtrack appearances on
Chariots Of Fire and Blade Runner.

DALLAS TAYLOR

CSNYbassist

1948-2015

The figure peering from behind the
door on the cover of CSN’s 1969
debut was drummer Dallas Taylor.
Formerly in psychedelic outfit Clear
Light, whose sole LP had been
issued on Elektra two years earlier,
Taylor was instrumental in shaping
the rhythm tracks with Stephen
Stills. He remained part of the set¬
up when Neil Young was brought in
for CSNY’s Deja Vu, even finding
himself billed on the front sleeve
alongside bassist Greg Reeves. The
dynamic, however, had shifted.

“I really gave him a rough time,”
Young admitted in Jimmy
McDonough’s Shakey. “It was like
he felt I shouldn’t be in CSN and I
felt like he couldn’t play my music.”
The association with Stills,
meanwhile, spilled over into the
latter’s 1970 solo debut and
‘supergroup’ Manassas. Taylor also
played with Van Morrison, toured
with Paul Butterfield and co-wrote
“Things Will Be Better” on The

Byrds’ 1973 comeback LP. By then
the rock’n’roll lifestyle had exacted
a heavy toll on Taylor, who’d
become hooked on alcohol, cocaine
and heroin. It would be another
decade before he kicked his vices,
after which he began a new career
as an addiction counsellor in LA.

ANDRAE CROUCH

Gospel singer, arranger

1942-2015

Known as “the father of modern
gospel”, Andrae Crouch pioneered
the crossover into secular music.

He and his backing group, The
Disciples, released a series of
albums throughout the ’70s,
housing favourites like “The Blood
Will Never Lose Its Power” and “My
Tribute (To God Be The Glory)”. But
it was his association with Michael
Jackson and Madonna that brought
him a mainstream audience. He
conducted the choirs on Jackson’s
“Man In The Mirror”, “Keep The
Faith” and “Will You Be There”, as
well as Madonna’s “Like A Prayer”.
Crouch also contributed to the
soundtracks of The Colour Purple
and The Lion King.

A$APYAMS_

A$AP Mob founder

1988-2015

Steven Rodriguez was better
known as A$AP Yams, co-founder
and creative visionary of US hip-

hop crew, A$AP Mob. The Harlem
collective forged a reputation as
cultural tastemakers, uniting the
worlds of rap, film, art and fashion.
Yams’ extensive Tumblr page
became the visual focus of their
activities and he was also credited
as executive producer on A$AP
Rocky’s 2013 solo breakthrough,
Long.Live.A$AP. Rocky called
Yams, whose cause of death is yet to
be announced, “the mastermind
behind the scenes”. He negotiated
Rocky’s deal with Polo Ground/
RCA and introduced the rest of
A$AP Mob to a wider appreciation
of the national hip-hop scene.

IAN ALLEN

Negativland member

1958-2015

Without the input of Ian Allen,
who has died from complications
following heart surgery, it’s
doubtful whether Negativland
would ever have developed the idea
of tape-splicing as a songwriting
tool. It was a technique that Allen
introduced on the US collagists’
second album, Points (1981), and
which reached full fruition on 1983
follow-up, A Big 10-8 Place. The
band also cited him as a major
contributor to the subversive art of
culture jamming. Though he quit
Negativland in the late ’80s, his
former colleagues stated that his
“impact, inspiration and influence
on the group is impossible to
overestimate”, robhughes

APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 119

LIDO/SIPA/REX; MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES

GETTY IMAGES/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES

LETTERS

Feedback...

Email uncut_feedback@timeinc.com or write to: Uncut Feedback, 8th Floor, Blue Fin Building,
110 Southwark Street, London SE1OSU. Or tweet us at twitter.com/uncutmagazine

the hospitals near the Syrian border.
There is no prejudice there. Injured
Syrians secretly cross the border
for treatment in Israel.

I’m not an Israel apologist. I
criticise Israel when I think it
deserves it. But it’s funny how when
people talk about the conflict with
Gaza last summer, they seem to
forget to mention the thousands of
rockets which were fired into Israel.

How would England react if 4,000
rockets were fired from Wales,
especially if the rockets were
being launched from schools and
hospitals? There is also no mention
of the tunnels built to allow Gazans
to commit terrorist acts inside Israel.
The materials for the tunnels
actually came from Israel and were
meant for the reconstruction of
Gaza. But Hamas decided to use it
for hatred. And do Mr Waters and
Costello know how many children
died building those tunnels?

So let’s have some balance when
you print one-sided tripe as written
byMrKeay.

I read David Keay’s letter in the
same week that the latest figures
on anti-Semitism in Britain were
announced - and were at a record
high. While people claim that being
against Israel doesn’t make you
anti-Semitic, you only have to read

NEIL YOUNG AND
ISRAEL: PART TWO

With reference to the letter about
‘nasty’ Israel, written by David
Keay, it’s amazing how many people

TANGLED UP IN
OU BLUE EYES

Bob Dylan’s recent album Shadows
In The Night is a timely reminder of
what made Frank Sinatra so great.

A very recent addition to his
reputation is the release of Live
In Seattle 1957 , which passed
without any fanfare at all. This is
regrettable, because it should be
viewed with the same reverence as
Bowie’s legendary Live At Nassau
Coliseum 9 76 show. Featuring
Nelson Riddle’s orchestra, this is
an utterly crucial addition to any
serious music collector. Easily his
greatest live performance.

At the heart of those
magnificent albums he
made for Capitol in the
1950s are the flawless
“suicide sets”,
namely In The Wee
Small Hours, Where
Are You?, Only The
Lonely and No One
Cares. What is so
astonishing is how
each set becomes
progressively bleaker.

I have listened to Nick
Drake, Neil Young, Joy
Division, Iggy Pop, Swans, The
Smiths, Scott Walker and Leonard
Cohen at their most desolate, but
none of them have matched the
astonishing sorrow of Sinatra on
those recordings. Frank was on
Desolation Row long before Dylan
had thought of the term.

A heartbreaking example would
have to be “I Could Have Told You”,
recorded three days after his suicide
attempt over the failure of his
marriage to Ava Gardner, who
comes across as utterly destructive
to all who encountered her.

I asked many friends to listen to
the “suicide sets” back to back for a

small bet. None of them have taken
up the offer. Even after 30 years of
owning them, I still find them
difficult to listen in complete
chunks. Who can blame Sinatra for
becoming Mr Ring A Ding Ding,
champion of wanton good times?
At least he got out alive, unlike so
many others.

Rob Jones, Huntingdon

think

that just
because
Roger Waters
says something, it must be true. His
rants carry the same gravitas as
Alan Partridge’s hatred of farmers.
When I hear Waters calling Israel an
apartheid state, all I really hear is:
“You make pigs smoke and feed
beefburgers to swans.”

If any of these ‘caring’ musicians
really did care, then they wouldn’t
take the action they do. When they
call for boycotts of Israel or for
Israeli companies to pull out of the
West Bank, they are actually
harming the Palestinians they
think they are looking out for. They
are calling for the Palestinians to
lose their jobs and harming the
Palestinian economy. And
comparing the situation in Israel
to apartheid South Africa or the
Holocaust is an insult to black South

Africans and Jews, respectively. If
these musicians really cared, then
they should go to Israel to perform
but also take time to see some of the

projects which are trying to bring
Israelis and Palestinians together.
They might be surprised. There are
plenty of Palestinians who say they
prefer to live under Israeli rule than
Palestinian. And they should visit

between the lines to see the truth.
Mike Cohen, Deputy Editor, Jewish
Telegraph Group Of Newspapers

I am appalled that Uncut has been
lured into publishing an email
headed ‘Neil Young and Israel’ in its
letters page [March 2015 ]. It is totally
inappropriate for a respected music
magazine to stumble head first into
printing an individual’s personal
political point of view without any
editorial comment whatsoever. The
Gaza-Israel conflict in summer 2014
is a highly problematic one. It is
complex and tragic, and one which
sadly may rage for years to come.

I’m certain that everyone - whether
it’s people like us, or ‘rock stars’ like
Neil Young - were utterly saddened
and disturbed by the graphic
images, and first-hand or
journalist’s descriptions of the
tragic consequences of warfare.

I certainly do not buy Uncut to
be immersed in the quagmire of
political turmoil in the Middle East
and I cannot stand silent when I am
subjected to an individual merely
using Uncut as a platform to unleash
his personal point of view about
Israel and the Palestine question,
camouflaged in the guise of second-
guessing what a rock musician
should or shouldn’t stand for.

You must understand that to
publish any such letter is offensive
to many readers (some of whom,
like myself, have subscribed for
over 10 years) and to all those who
buy your magazine to enjoy articles
about the thing we all love - great
music - and not being subjected to
someone’s barbed political whims.
By the way, anybody who thinks
Wire is an “apolitical” group (except
citing just one track written almost
40 years ago) is way out of touch.
Lawrence Elf, via email

UNSOUND JUDGMENTS

I’m sorry, but what book was Allan
Jones reading when he decided to
give Glyn Johns’ abysmal memoir,
Sound Man, a rating as high as an
8/10? [February 2015] “A little tight-
lipped” is putting it mildly; Johns’
“not my place to say” approach
to memory lane has the reader
wondering why he bothered to write
anything in the first place. There are
some mildly interesting vignettes,
like Keith Richards nodding off
during the 1971 Marquee Club show,
but any rock memoir that spends

120 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

One of three copies
of Courtney Barnett’s
Sometimes I Sit... on CD

more pages recounting waiting on
the docks with Ian Stewart and the
Stones equipment than it does
working on The Beatles’ Let It Be
sessions (he ran some cable to the
speakers for the famous rooftop
concert; be still my heart) is one
sorely in need of an editor’s lance. If
you’re looking for a truly satisfying
account of a producer’s work with a
major band, on both a technical and
personal level, check out EMI Geoff
Emerick’s sumptuous 2006 book,
Here , There And Everywhere: My Life
Recording The Music Of The Beatles.
Stephen Conn, Las Cruces,
NewMexico

BRING BACK ALLAN!

Thank you, thank you Allan fones
for the wholly apt piece on Joe
Cocker [March 2015] . You are the
only popular music writer still
writing today who appreciates the
sheer heft of the heritage lived
through by your contemporaries,
and I really, really fucking miss you
editing this magazine! God bless Joe
Cocker. There will never be another
tour like Mad Dogs because it would
never be considered viable today.

If readers haven’t already done so,
they should rush and listen to that
joyous rabble lift those songs to
another place, led by one of the
greatest singers who ever lived.

RIP Joe and come back Allan, all is
forgiven (not that I don’t appreciate
John Mulvey. He’s all right for a
young lad).

Karen Banwell , via email

“A WORLD-CLASS
LIBERAL MORON!”

Big fan of Jackson Browne, the
artist, but he is a world-class liberal
moron. I love the part in Nick
Hasted’s review of a recent Browne
concert about the “...Fox-watching
masses of America are people you
can’t really talk to...” Don’t worry -
the MSNBC-watching masses are
lovely people! They are smart,
engaging people who are right
about everything! It’s not about
arguing Browne’s point - he can
believe what he wants - but it just
shows he is the type of liberal that
only sees one side of a story, always
blaming someone else. Instead of
pointing the finger at a few folks
on his team, Browne is happy to
blame ‘the other guy’ for all the
problems of the world. I cannot
stand these types of jackass people
(especially entertainers!!). It’s the
Fox-watchers who are ruining the
country! Yes! That’s it. The Liberals
who watch MSNBC, or read The
New York Times, can do no wrong
where Jackson Browne is
concerned, which is why he is
a major dumb-ass.

Jeff Hyatt, via email

HOWTOENTER

The letters in the shaded squares form an anagram of a song by Joni Mitchell. When you’ve
worked out what it is, send your answer to: Uncut April 2015 Xword Comp, 8th floor.

Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SEi oSU. The first correct entry picked at
random will win a prize. Closing date: Monday, March 23,2015. This competition is
only open to European residents.

CLUES ACROSS

1+9A Difficult to see how HankMarvin
and others played with Bob Dylan
(7-2-3-5)

8 Scorcher of a single from Two Door
Cinema Club (3)

9 (See 1 across)

10 (See 2 down)

11 (See 35 across)

12 Emily Haines’ band measure up to
her Fantasies (6)

15 (i Johnny come lately, the _/

Everybody loves you, so don’t let them
down”, 1977(3-3-2-4)

17 A Flock Of Seagulls made me take flight

(1-3)

19+18D Not facing up to the situation in
A Momentary Lapse Of Reason with
Pink Floyd (2-37-4)

22 (See 8 down)

23 As Ella Marija Lani Yelich- O’Connor is
better known (5)

25 Plays with Funkadelic on album (4)

28 Lou Reed’s final album was this
collaboration with Metallica (4)

30 I’m taking ages to name this album by
The Walker Brothers (6)

31 A bored sort of performance from
MarcBolan(6)

33+5D Glaswegians who took A Walk
Across The Rooftops (4-4)

34 Prickly kind of person into F rankie Goes
To Hollywood (5)

35+11A Somehow girl rips in half an album
by The Go-Betweens (6-4-4)

CLUES DOWN

1 “ While I’m worth my room on this earth,

I will bewithyou/While the Chief puts

_”, 1988(8-2-5)

2+10A Len held gig at strange setting for
Fairport Convention performance (5-7)

3 “You’re obsolete, mybaby/Mypoorold-
fashionedbaby”, 1966(3-2-4)

4 Born John Simon Ritchie in 1957 (3-7)

5 (See 33 across)

6 US producer who has worked with New
Order, OMD and Pet Shop Boys (5)

7 A bit of a frantic show from Interpol (6)
8+22 A Leo is one of the 12 with Teenage
Fanclub(4-4)

13 Later today there will be an album from
David Bowie (7)

14 Composer of music and lyrics in recent
musical The Last Ship (5)

16 A current drop in The Stone Roses’
output (9)

18 (See 19 across)

20 White Lies’ album was j ust more of the
same old thing (6)

21 A certain sideshow includes music from
Orbital (2-5)

24 A mournful song on LP by The Nice (5)

26 Peter Gabriel album completed in
solo vocals (3)

27 Def Leppard in a bit of tasteless
language (5)

29 Regina Spektor song is tedious at the
end (2)

32 “Ifyou love me let me go back to that _

in Tokyo”, The Wombats (3)

ANSWERS: TAKE 213
ACROSS

1 Rock Or Bust, 8 Hold On,

9 Are We There, 10 Heaven,
12 Our Frank, 15+17A+24D
Drums And Wires,

20+35 A Friday On My Mind,
21+2D Blue Cheer,

22 Ott, 23 Law, 25 Set, 27 Red
Eyes, 31WFL, 32 Let Go,

34 Easter.

DOWN

1 Reason To Believe, 3+7D One
Love, 4+i8ABehindThe
Sun, 5TheHum, 6+29D Clear
Spot, 11 Nadine, 13 Faster,

i4l<rafty, 16 Side, 17 Anyway,
19 No One, 25+30A Steve
Earle, 26 Town, 27 Relay,
28Dulli,33Tad.

HIDDEN ANSWER

“Eight Line Poem”

XWORD COMPILED BY:

TrevorHungerford

UNCUT

TAKE 215 | APRIL 2015

Time Inc. (UK) Ltd, 8th Floor, Blue Fin
Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SEI
OSU. Tel: 020 3148 6982 www.uncut.co.uk

EDiTORjohn Mulvey
Associate Editor Michael Bonner
Associate Editor John Robinson

Art Editor Marc Jones
Senior Designer Michael Chapman
Production Editor MickMeikleham
Sub Editor/Writer Tom Pinnock
Picture Researcher Phil King
Editor At Large Allan Jones

Contributors Jason Anderson, Ben
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Williams, Nigel Williamson, Jim Wirth,

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APRIL 2015 | UNCUT | 121

INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK PHOTO: PAUL COX

MYLIFEIN MUSIC _

Jim Kerr

The Simple Mind recalls his otherworldy influences, from
The Doors to Bowie to John Cale at “the peak of his madness

99

The first album
Ibought

T.Rex

Electric Warrior 1971
I bought this from a classmate in 1972.1 think
he was into heavier stuff and was keen to
dispose of it. I’d first seen T.Rex on Top Of The
Pops, and for me, in terms of the style, the look and a lot of the sound, there
was no precedent. T.Rex were quite good because both boys and girls loved
them... so there was an ‘in’ there with girls if you were walking around
with a copy of Electric Warrior under your arm.

An album that’s perfect
for off-Broadway

Lou Reed

Transformer 1972

I hadn’t heard of the VU, so Lou Reed came
to me via the whole Bowie connection and
Transformer. The songs sound like they were
written for some stage play off-Broadway, and they do sound theatrical.
There are horns and double basses and beautiful ballads, like “Perfect
Day” and “Satellite Of Love”. You can hear Mick Ronson all over this - not
only was he an amazing guitar player, but he was a great arranger, too.

The record that
introduced me to
keyboards

The Doors

The Doors 1967

11 loved the sound, the lyrics, the imagery, and
particularly Jim Morrison and the whole otherworldliness of it. This was
an album that introduced the idea of keyboards to me, not just electric
guitars. And to this day we still listen to The Doors - in fact, we will be
playing a Doors song as one of the encores on this tour.

A touching record

John Cale

Slow Dazzle 1975

I remember a great ’75 Cale concert in Glasgow
City Hall. It was a weird atmosphere, not very
busy, a summer’s night, and they didn’t pull
the curtains. So we’re in this hall, daylight
streaming in, and Cale was at the peak of his madness, onstage anyway
- he wore a huge ski mask. The LP at that time, Slow Dazzle, has some of
his most touching tunes, though. “Mr Wilson” is a plea from Cale to Brian
Wilson, about how much his music meant to him. It’s a beautiful track.

a , Hs r

jy# v

7

siMMz/1.1

david noftvrr

The week after this came out, Bowie opened
his tour. They made their way to Glasgow and I
was so lucky to see them. I played the record for
hours leading up to the show, but nothing could prepare me for the visuals
and sounds. The brother of a guy in my class even got us into the backstage
corridor, and as Bowie and band were leaving, they swished past in those
clothes that turned up in the V&A. They were creatures from another world.

The record that reminds
me of seeing Bowie live

David Bowie

Aladdin Sane 1973

Me and Charlie Burchill got the first wave of
punk coming in from New York, really starting
with the Ramones and Television, but before
that there was Patti Smith’s Horses, produced
by John Cale - a great, great debut. There was something about when punk
came to the UK... it seemed to ignite, almost overnight. We owe our careers
to the fact we were around at that time as, a year or two before, it would
never have dawned on us you could actually do it yourself, but there I was.

A great debut album

Patti Smith

Horses 1975

Moogs and synths, albeit in the most funky
way, and Innervisions is the album I bought and played a lot. As well as
having some of the most romantic and spiritual songs, he’d throw politics
in as well - writing about the black urban experience and some of the more
deprived cities of America. It seemed very, very special to me.

An album that showed

us life after punk

Magazine

Real Life 1978

Punk was burning itself out, there was a lot of
dross. But, ages after leaving Buzzcocks, out
of nowhere Howard Devoto appeared again
with this sophisticated, dangerous sound. They featured the great, great
guitar player John McGeoch. It still had that punk energy, but for me it
was the first album that showed that things were moving on. This was the
prototype. Music like this, XTC as well, was leaving punk in its wake.

An album that got me
into electronics

Stevie Wonder

Innervisions

1973

Stevie Wonder was one of the first to use

Simple Minds 9 UK tour begins March 2/, with the Sparkle In The Rain boxsetoutnow. www.simpleminds.com

IN NEXT MONTHS UNCUT: “We couldn't get the people to be the MC5. We had to be the MC3 ...”

122 | UNCUT | APRIL 2015

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